Steve And The Barkeep
by Runaway Deviant
Summary: Steve has a routine, and god help him if he's going to break that routine for anyone - yes, that includes you, Tony. Enter a local barkeeper with a penchant for the occult and the gift of good conversation. EWE, not slash, just a couple of guys and a few hundred drinks. Rated for fear of the thought police.
1. Steve And The New Evening Routine

**Disclaimer:** I don't own The Avengers, in either its comic or movie incarnations. If I did, well, FrostIron would be far from the fantasy that it is. Actually, Loki would probably make everyone his bitch, but that will sadly (probably) never happen. I don't own Harry Potter either, but I have invested many hours (and dollars) into it, so really, I deserve the right to write this story.

Enjoy!

* * *

_"Drinking is the soldier's pleasure."**  
**_

**~ John Dryden**

* * *

**Steve and the New Evening Routine**

Steve had been running around New York since before he'd even been given the serum. At the time, it had been his way of trying to be strong and show that he was made of tougher stuff; now it was half because he had nothing else to do and half because he wanted to see what had changed.

A lot, apparently. Running was now a popular exercise form, it seemed; while before he'd been probably the only person in the world to even _want_ to exert himself in such a way, now it was seen as being a healthy and completely normal thing to do.

While it had originally started as something of a fact-finding mission, running had become part of his daily routine. Wake up, make self presentable, eat enough food that even Thor was impressed, mill around ugly tower with nothing to do, eat lunch, continue being bored until afternoon cartoons began playing on the television, exit ugly tower, run.

Every day at a certain stretch of road he would run beside a fellow jogger, a tanned brunette whom he'd never spoken to, until she turned down a street and he continued straight. Sometimes he wanted to follow her, or say something, but he never did. Then, down another street, he would pass a schoolboy walking on the other side of the street and in the opposite direction. The kid, a teenager, would invariably smile at him every day, and it made Steve's step a little light for the remainder of his run.

Today, however, was different.

Tony had made himself a nuisance around the shared commons of the tower that afternoon, so while he had managed to go on his run, he had left late, much to his chagrin. Routine was something that Steve was more than merely fond of, and to have it disrupted was not something he enjoyed.

He ended up only catching a glimpse of his brunette running partner; he saw her turn off just as he made it onto the street. Quietly disappointed, he continued onwards in time to find out where the schoolkid went every day.

Steve watched him on the opposite side of the road, smiling on seeing him and grinning on being smiled _at_. He would have continued on without much thought, but then he noticed where the child was headed; a bar. The boy removed his tie - the only thing that identified him as school-age - and pulled out his wallet. Steve frowned - the kid was going to try and get himself a drink!

He turned and made his way across the street, checking both ways before crossing - because he was a sensible man that way - and entered the bar only moments after the boy had.

The first thing that he saw when he came in was a dimly lit entrance hall that contained a staircase going down, one going up, and not much else. The second thing he saw was a doorway on his immediate left that led to a large, bright room which was filled with tables and chairs and a bar on the far side.

The man behind the bar looked up at him from a large book and smiled, "Welcome to the Dragon's Tongue," he said amiably in an accent that somewhat painfully reminded Steve of Peggy's, "Come on in."

Steve obliged with a small smile and made his way over to sit at the bar. He wondered where that kid had gotten to if he wasn't in the room.

"What can I get for you?" the bartender asked, leaning against the bench behind him.

"Just a water, thanks," Steve replied politely; drinking alcohol was a pointless endeavour for him, so he usually tried to avoid it.

The barkeep nodded and pulled out a bottle from the fridge, "You were running, huh?" he asked, obviously noticing the signs of his exertion.

Steve nodded; despite everything that the serum had changed in his body, he was still a sweat machine, "Yeah; I run by here often, actually. I came in because I saw a teenager come in here and I thought he was trying to get himself some alcohol, so..." he trailed off at the smile the barkeep gave him.

"Black hair, really light brown eyes, almost yellow?" he asked.

"Yes, actually. You know him?"

"Yessir, that would be my son; we live upstairs."

"Ah, that makes sense then."

A shot glass of light-green liquid was placed before him and he frowned.

"On the house, since this is your first time here," he was told, "I'm Harry, by the way. I own and run this place and have for nearly thirteen years now."

"Oh, I'm Steve," he replied, picking up the glass and examining it, "What is this?"

Harry grinned, "Down it in one and I'll tell you."

Steve stared suspiciously at the yellow liquid before throwing it back. The inside of his mouth and throat immediately set alight, and when he took a breath, everywhere that the alcohol had touched suddenly felt like ice.

"What-" he gasped, "What _is_ that stuff?"

Harry pushed the glass of water towards the blonde with a mischievous smile worthy of Tony.

"Loki's Breath."

Steve's eyes snapped back to the empty glass, but Harry simply tutted at him in response.

"Trust me; I named that stuff a long time before I knew what an arse the real guy was. I've got a drink for Thor and Odin, too; I even have a cocktail for Frigga."

Steve nodded without understanding; unlike most of the Avengers he hadn't researched the mythology behind their first - and most terrible - foe. If he wanted to know something, he just waited until he next saw Thor and asked the man who had lived the legends.

"Why is it named for Loki?" he asked instead of admitting his ignorance.

Harry seemed to realise that he didn't know, however, and leaned back against the bench behind him again.

"Because Loki, while being portrayed as either a half or full Jötunn - Frost Giant," he filled in at Steve's confused expression, "is also the god of fire."

Steve blinked; this was news to him; "Really? Hence the burning and the freezing?"

Harry nodded with a proud smile.

"I stumbled on that drink quite by accident; I'd forgotten about a barrel of Jötunheimr and when I tested it to see if it was any good, that happened," he recalled, "It's been somewhat popular to buy a shot of it and burn it since the battle, which is a bit of a waste, really, but I suppose it's better than burning down the entire pub."

Steve nodded and sipped his drink pensively. It sounded like something that Clint would like to do; the man still had pictures of Loki from his time in SHIELD custody attached to the heads of his practice mannequins.

"Do you name many of your drinks after gods?"

Harry nodded and stepped off the bench the gesture at the bottles behind him, "All of the ones that I make myself are named after mythical beings, but they're not just Norse. I started with Celtic, then Norse, and then I moved onto Egyptian and Mesopotamian. I have some from different versions of ancient Chinese myth and whole heap of creatures from Japan," he then pointed to those sitting on a separate shelf, "Those are for Native American stories, stretching all the way from the northernmost Eskimos to the most southern South American Natives. Hawaii is included too. The shelf underneath represents many of the Polynesian and Australasian stories."

Steve hadn't known how many myths about gods and creatures had existed until that moment. As he read the strangely decorative labels, he suddenly realised that being "just a kid from Brooklyn" wasn't going to cut it as an excuse for so little knowledge in the open world he found himself inhabiting.

"I also have a bunch more under the counter," Harry finished, looking rather sheepish, "which is where I also keep the normal drinks for boring people."

"Wow... Just... How do you find the time? You look too young to have made up _all_ of these," Steve exclaimed.

Harry grinned in return, "Why thank you; you don't look too bad yourself, for an old man."

Steve's eyes turned back to Harry with a start, "You recognised me?"

"Of course," he said with a nod, "I was in the bank that day, you know, with the grenade thing? You saved my life and probably the lives of everyone in that room from those things."

"Just doing my job..." Steve murmured, looking down.

"Mate, I was a cop for almost two years in England before I decided that being a hero was the worst job in the history of ever. Trust me, what you do goes beyond "just a job"."

Steve opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by a call from the hallway.

"Dad! What does _sowilo_ do when you tilt it forty degrees to the left and- oh. Hi," the boy who had walked in finished lamely. Steve took a moment to examine the teen - Harry's son - more closely than he had before. Asides from the hair, there didn't seem to be much of his father in him - a heart shaped face, dips next to his mouth that would probably turn into dimples when he smiled and eyes that were as eerily golden as his father's were green. It struck him that Harry looked somewhat like Loki, but he dismissed it immediately.

"Hello," he replied, nodding to the young man.

The boy nodded back and then continued towards the bar, "Anyway, one book said that it increases the power, but the one that Nan bought me said that it increases a person's foresight and clears thought. Do you know?"

"What's the context?" asked Harry, holding his hand out for the paper in his son's hand. Steve sat, silent and completely lost, and watched the man smile slightly, "When it's used that way, tilting it doesn't change the effect at all."

"A trick question?" he exclaimed in response, "That's not fair!"

Harry laughed; "Welcome to Runes, Teddy; every symbol has about twelve meanings, even when they're right way up."

Teddy grumbled as he took the sheet back and glared at it, practically stomping up the stairs and back to wherever he'd come from.

Harry smiled indulgently and with obvious fondness at his son's minor tantrum.

"Does he take after his mother?" Steve asked, wondering if it would be rude to ask for another glass of water.

Harry took his glass and filled it again, "You have no idea. If I had known that he was going to be such a hellion when he hit puberty, I would have left him back in England with his grandmother!" he laughed good-naturedly.

"I HEARD THAT!" the teen in question yelled from upstairs.

"DO YOUR HOMEWORK OR I'LL FLIRT WITH YOUR HISTORY TEACHER AGAIN NEXT PARENT-TEACHER MEETING!" he yelled back. The response was a horrified "eep!" and then silence.

Steve was about to say something about Harry's appearance and his son's age when another shot glass was placed before him.

"What's this?"

"Thor's Hammer; not quite the most powerful drink, that title belongs to the Odinsleep, but I thought you might enjoy the irony."

Steve picked up the shot glass and decided just not to ask anymore.

"Bottoms up," he said, raising it in a toasting motion, and downed it in one hit.

For a moment he felt nothing, and then suddenly there was a tingling feeling racing from his stomach all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes - almost like he'd been zapped by a low voltage battery. He shuddered through the strange feeling and wondered how the hell a _drink_ had the power to do _that_ to a person.

"Magic," Harry answered with a grin, and Steve realised with a tiny flicker of embarrassment that he'd asked the question aloud.

Steve remained at the pub for another two hours, occasionally interrupted by a query from Teddy about some problem or another, until actual paying customers began entering. He tried to pay what he felt was owed for the drink-sampling but his money was waved away with a stern glare from Harry; "Next time you come you can pay, not this time. Bring a friend or something; I'd love to hear stories about the Avengers from the figurative horse's mouth."

Steve realised on his way back to the tower than Harry had only mentioned his identity as Captain America twice throughout the afternoon, and smiled to himself; it was good to be Just Steve to someone after so long as a nation's idol.

* * *

**AN: **What started as a one-shot... is no longer a one-shot. There are at least two more chapters to this (probably up to four, I'd say), so hold onto your butts people.

~ Runaway


	2. Steve And The Master Of Death

_"It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth."_

**~ George F. Burns**

* * *

**Steve and the Master of Death  
**

Clean-up was always the worst part of a battle. If Steve was anywhere near where the carnage had taken place, he would always make sure that his team was there to help the SHIELD agents out (no matter how much Tony bitched and moaned).

Today was not the first day that he had regretted the rule he'd made with the best of intentions, but today was without a doubt the worst he had ever, _ever_, felt about the outcome of a battle.

Steve grit his teeth as he looked at the last body. It was the one he had ordered none of the others to clean up, the one that he was only now allowing himself to even contemplate touching.

The one that was Harry's.

He lowered himself to his knees at the side of his friend's corpse and didn't even notice when a low keening noise began to emit from his throat.

There, right next to the lightning bolt scar that Harry had yet to explain to him, was a bullet hole. It was a perfect circle, which seemed impossible, and he really didn't want to see what the exit wound looked like. But he knew that _he_ was the one that was going to have to look at it since he hadn't allowed even a single SHIELD agent near the man - he'd nearly thrown his shield at the last guy that tried.

He glanced at the people who were standing a good distance away, obviously making sure he didn't just collapse into hysterics and start breaking things. The agents wouldn't interfere if they knew what was good for them, but... his team would. They didn't know all that much about Harry; they didn't know that his bar was where Steve ended up during his evening run every day, they didn't know that Harry was fast becoming his best friend, but what they did know was his first name and that Steve was attached to him like a barnacle to a ship's hull.

And his ship had thrown itself in front of another civilian almost the moment Hammer's roboids had started firing.

Steve turned back to Harry, knowing he didn't have much time before he had to turn over the body to SHIELD's clean-up team. He thought that the wound had been larger when it had first been inflicted, but he supposed that the spray of blood had made it seem that way. Speaking of blood, there appeared to be only a little around his friend's head - if anything, there seemed to be less and less...

Steve's mouth fell open as he watched the bullet hole in Harry's head decrease in size millimetre by millimetre.

He pulled Harry into his arms - the wound was even smaller now, and Steve swore he could see bone knitting together in there - and, standing, sent a rather pointed look at Tony before turning and running like the hounds of hell were after him.

Behind him, Tony - bless his metal heart - had spun the rest of the Avengers around to face their shared home the second they'd made eye contact and was expounding on the wonder that was Avengers nee Stark Tower.

Clint told him to fuck off, Bruce rolled his eyes, Thor nodded thoughtfully and Natasha silently said a prayer for the guy that Steve had run off with.

* * *

Steve took Harry to the only place he could - the Dragon's Tongue. He pushed open the front door, grateful for once that Harry didn't ever feel the need to lock his doors, even outside business hours, and made his way up to the man's bedroom. He'd only seen it once, when Harry had been running around like a whirlwind trying to get ready to go out and Steve had followed along like a puppy. He'd hoped that the next time he saw it would be to borrow some of those "magic" books that the smaller man was always reading, but such was not the case.

Just as he reached the door, Teddy stepped out of his own room and stopped, staring open-mouthed at his father lying dead – though looking rapidly less pale - in Steve's arms.

His mouth snapped shut very suddenly, and he opened the bedroom door for Steve, who vaguely recalled that he was still in his "spangled" uniform - that phrase would never leave his mind, thank you Tony.

"Put him on the bed," Teddy ordered. He sounded shaken, but not as badly as he should have been at seeing his father limp and dead in another man's arms. Steve cursed his stupidity as he laid his friend out on the bed.

"Teddy, I'm-"

"He's not going to be dead for much longer, Steve," Teddy cut in pointedly looking anywhere except at the skin stretching to cover the now whole bone of his father's skull, "Just... keep an open mind, okay? Dad doesn't like to tell people that he can't die, or how many times he's met Death."

"Met _Death_?" Steve asked dumbly.

"Yeah; he's- dad is... Dad's special," he finished softly.

"Special."

"Uh huh."

"Teddy, since he's your dad, does that make you... _special_, as well?"

Teddy shook his head, "Dad isn't my biological dad. He's my godfather, but he's not actually related to me."

This was definitely news to Steve.

"Besides, the not-dying thing is something he inherited, but he wasn't born that way."

A loud gasp erupted from Harry's once-dead body and both of their heads snapped to watch as he coughed, trying to make his lungs work again.

"Dad, try to breathe more slowly!" Teddy scolded as he went and sat beside his father on the bed.

"Sorry," Harry apologised, and Steve's heart clenched at how _tired_ he sounded, "The first breath-"

"Is always the hardest, I know - you've told me heaps of times."

A moment of silence passed as Harry's breathing descend to normal levels before Steve spoke up.

"... Harry?"

Harry's eyes flickered open and met his before closing again. "Fuck."

* * *

When Steve trudged into the Avengers' shared living space that evening, he received pitying looks but no condolences.

He was glad for this; it would feel weird to accept them when the man they were lamenting over was serving customers in a building that Steve could literally see from the tower.

Steve was also glad to know that Tony was never likely to change; the man couldn't keep a secret if it came with a cage and care instructions. He probably would've been angry if Harry actually _had_ been dead, but at the moment he was so elated that he couldn't care less.

The fact that his friend had promised to teach him how to ride a broom on the weekend was not a factor in his good mood, no sir.

The bottle of Odinsleep he was carrying was placed on the coffee table, and Steve went to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of coke and a glass before returning. He shooed Tony away from the bottle and poured himself a drink, raising the glass and toasting to the ceiling.

"To hard-headed bar-wizards," he said, before chugging the entire thing down.

Tony had skulked off to the kitchen and returned with his own glass, placing it near the bottle and proceeding to give Steve what could only be construed as "puppy-dog eyes". Steve stared at him for a long moment before sighing and pouring the genius a tiny bit, cutting off Tony's complaint by saying, "Try it before you attempt to drink the rest of my bottle."

Tony took a sip and immediately started coughing once he'd swallowed.

"What the heck is that stuff?" he asked once he'd recovered, looking absolutely smitten with it.

"Odinsleep," Steve replied evenly, knowing that he was now doomed to share it, "Harry's strongest creation."

"Oh," Tony said, obviously not knowing how to respond to that information without mortally offending him.

"A drink named after my father's resting state?" asked Thor, effectively saving him.

"Yeah, probably the strongest drink that exists on this planet," Steve informed him somewhat proudly.

The demi-god went to the kitchen and brought back a glass of his own, into which Steve poured a sizeable amount of the liquor, before dispensing some more for himself and Tony and raising his glass again; "To kicking the crap out of Hammer the next time I see him."

"Here, here!" the other two agreed, though Tony's was somewhat fiercer than Thor's.

Thor put down his glass and smiled, "A most satisfying beverage! Your Harry's skill in brewing was unparalleled amongst humans; much better than the weak swill I have sampled thus far."

Tony glared at Thor from across the table, "Well you can't have any more of my scotch, if that's what you think of it."

"Ah, do not be mistaken, friend Tony," Thor apologised, motioning to the glass, "I am simply commenting on the strength of the drink; yours have many more flavours and varieties than those on Asgard, but sometimes I long for a mug of strong ale to fill my belly."

"This is definitely not ale," Tony told him, eyeing the bottle with something akin to lust.

The night progressed like this, and by the end everyone but Bruce had had _something_ to drink.

Tony had passed out after four glasses, despite the drink being liberally watered down - and much to his chagrin on waking the next morning - and even Steve was feeling tingly from his nose to his toes by the time he and Thor managed to polish off the bottle.

* * *

"Afternoon, Harry," Steve said as he entered the bar.

"Steve, good to see you as always," Harry replied, and they shared a secret grin, the type that said "we know things that no one else does".

"How's that headache coming along?" asked Steve.

"Mostly gone; it'd be gone faster if you'd promise not to tell SHIELD or Fury where I am."

"I promise," Steve replied instantly, "How long did you say you've been on their watch list?"

"Since nineteen-eighty-one, mate; SHIELD and I have been acquainted since we were both just babies."

They shared another grin and Harry placed a glass full of liquid that was murky white, bordering on silver, in front of him.

"New drink?"

"The Avenger."

"Ah."

* * *

**AN:** Oh my gods, people! I woke up this morning with the intention of checking my emails and heading for uni, but I was _not_ expecting the amount of attention this got – and in one night!

My thanks for all the follows, favourites and especially the reviews; I love hearing where people would take an idea and I love it when you guys give me ideas for what's going to happen.

**ALSO, FEAR NOT!**

Harry _is_ going to be properly characterised later on; if I had worked his life story into this chapter it wouldn't have flowed properly, but you _will_ know something of what happened to him after the Battle of Hogwarts.

AGAIN, THANK YOU SO MUCH!

~ Runaway


	3. Steve And The Demotion

_"It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend, one's present or future thirst, the excellence of the wine, or any other reason."_

**~ Latin Proverb**

* * *

**Steve and the Demotion**

The debriefing for Hammer's attack took place two days after the actual event, for reasons unknown to the Avengers.

The majority was business as usual; they were told the extent of the damage (in US dollars), Tony refused to pay for anything other than what he'd accidentally caused, they raged over the number of casualties (thankfully very few when compared to the Battle of New York) and Steve spent the entire time formulating ways to reduce that number the next time.

"Oh, and Captain Rogers," Fury added as they all stood to leave the room, "I expect the location of Mister Potter on my desk by the end of the week."

The response was fast, simple and surprised everyone in the room, "No, sir."

Tony sat back down; this would be interesting.

"I'm sorry, Rogers, did I just hear you say "_no_" to a superior officer?" Fury asked, his voice deceptively calm.

"Yes you did, sir."

"Just because you call him your "friend" doesn't mean he can be left to run around without rules or restraints, Rogers. You have no idea what that man is capable of."

"I know better than to think I know what _you're_ capable of, Director," Steve shot back, an obvious jab at the Phase Two incident, "and I absolutely refuse to give you his location. I doubt I could if I wanted to."

"But you could undoubtedly lead us to the place in question."

"I won't."

"And what if I told you that there was a court-martial in your future, soldier?"

"Frankly, Director, I don't give a damn."

Tony snorted quietly and made a mental note to find out if Steve had ever watched _Gone With The Wind_.

"Very well, Captain Rogers. I hereby remove you from active duty."

Bruce and Clint both opened their mouths to object, but Fury held up a hand to silence their protests.

"You will be allowed to serve in your capacity as an Avenger, but until you reveal the location of Mister Potter to SHIELD you will be without the power of your rank and any of the awards that you have been bestowed while serving in that role. Is that understood?"

Steve stood from his chair and said, "Loud and crystal clear sir," he ground out, "I suppose I'll just have to be called America from here on out."

And with that he stormed from the room.

Fury followed mere moments later, an aura of deep anger and frustration about him, leaving five stunned Avengers in his wake.

"Who the hell is "Mister Potter"?" Clint asked to the room as a whole, receiving nothing more useful than shrugs and disturbed looks for answers.

* * *

"I am no longer Captain America," Steve announced as he slid onto his stool at the Dragon's Tongue, garnering a stunned look from Harry.

"What the bloody hell do you mean you're no longer Captain America?" he asked (read: yelled), "You've been saving the world since before I was even born! You can't just stop!"

"Oh, I'm not going to stop being a hero," Steve assured him as he grabbed his customary shot glass of whatever Harry had picked for him today and proceeded to drink it whole, "It's just that I've been stripped of my rank. From now on, you can call me," he paused for effect, "America!"

Harry snorted and took back the empty shot glass to clean it as Steve made a face at the sour taste. Harry waved the bottle labelled The Elizabethan Witch in his face and asked, "What the hell did you to do get _that_ sort of punishment?"

Steve smiled somewhat sheepishly up at him, "I defended you from Fury."

Harry looked shocked for a moment before sighing and patting Steve's shoulder, "Sometimes I forget that, despite the difference in times and circumstance, we're pretty much the same person."

Steve could only grin at that, and then cocked an eyebrow at the sudden flurry of movement behind the counter. After less than a minute, a deep blue cocktail was placed before him, complete with sparkly silver umbrella.

"This is?"

"The Mind of Metis," Harry informed him, "Maybe next time you try to be a hero for those that don't really need it, it'll help you."

Steve shot his friend a look, but took the drink, "Metis would be?"

"A Greek titan of wisdom and cunning. Zeus ate her, and then gave birth to Athena from his head after Hephaestus cracked his skull open with an axe."

"Why do I keep asking these things?"

"Admit it, you love hearing about weird mythology. Greece just has more of them that make less sense."

"Stop giving me weird Greek drinks then."

"Stop doing things that make them appropriate to give."

"I hate you."

"Love you too, mate."

* * *

Fury had not seen such insubordination since... well, since he'd been promoted to Director and had told the Council that they could all go suck a popsicle because he was _not_ going to be their lapdog.

What he had done in the past was off little concern to him now, though. What mattered was the present, and the present was looking grim.

Harry Potter, Britain's saviour and all-round good guy had finally shown up on his radar again, after years of appearing sporadically around the world. And the bastard had been living right underneath his nose! The very thought made Fury want to throw the cactus that Stark had bought him at one of his underlings.

He wouldn't, of course; Fury was a bastion of composure in the hectic world that SHIELD inhabited.

Instead, he planned to find out every damn thing that Potter had been doing in the thirteen years he'd been underground. Occasional appearances in random countries did not a case file make; he wanted to know exactly what the man and his kid had eaten for breakfast since the day they were both born, and he wanted to know _now_.

"Agent Coulson," he said after hitting one of the speed dial button on his intercom, "Get me Romanoff, would you?"

"Yes, sir," came the reply. Fury thanked whatever was listening that _someone_ underneath him in the command structure did what he told them to.

Half an hour later and Romanoff stood before him, blank faced and awaiting instruction. Fury _really_ like her, sometimes.

"Romanoff, I want to know everything that you can find out about Rogers' friend. You probably know him as Harry," he informed her from his chair.

She frowned slightly, the only sign of her confusion, and said, "Sir, Steve's friend passed away during the battle with Hammer this week; he was one of the first casualties."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Agent, but Harry is as dead as you or I," he pushed a dismally thin folder towards her, and gestured for her to take it.

She picked up the folder, her frown deepening as she did so.

"I want you to make that folder as big as Stark's is, Romanoff. Potter isn't that much younger, after all."

Natasha's eyes flickered, and Fury knew that she was figuring his age versus his appearance to try and make out why Fury was interested in him. He knew when she came up with the right answer because she straightened and met his eye.

"I expect an update by the end of the week."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

Natasha flipped through the folder on the ride home.

'To snoop or not to snoop?' she thought, grimacing at the number of deaths and subsequent resurrections that were on file. She couldn't help but smirk at the conclusion to the last one before he disappeared from SHIELD's watch; Potter had been through the grinder, but when he came out on top he stabbed a flag into the summit just to prove he could.

She could always just say that she hadn't been able to find anything out... but her pride as an agent wouldn't allow her to do that.

'I'm sorry, Steve,' she thought to herself as the quinjet landed on the roof of Stark tower. She flicked a wave at the pilot, who nodded and took off again, before making her way down to her room.

"How to find someone who can be invisible, can use magic to hide their tracks and who rarely leaves their house," she pondered, locking her door and spreading out the papers on her bed.

"How to find a man being protected by Captain America, for that matter..."

* * *

**AN:** Be warned that I am wont to go back and tweak bits of previous chapters based on the reviews I get; in this case I changed a bit of the beginning of the last chapter (not by much, I promise).

Once again, thank you all _so very much_ for the reviews, follows and favourites. Arc reactor cookies for everyone; you all deserve one!

**Also: **An anon reviewer asked that I not make this a Steve/Harry fic. Don't worry, anon, this is a Steve/Harry fic, but they're only friends! _They are going to stay friends_. This is not a romance. The only romantic relationships that will even be mentioned here are Thor/Jane and Tony/Pepper, and as they are canon I feel that I can use those.

**People Hoping For Slash:** Squint, my pretties, squint hard enough and you can probably imagine it. :D


	4. Steve And The Nosy Teammates

_"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day."_

**~ Frank Sinatra**

* * *

**Steve and the Nosy Teammates**

"Right then," Tony said as he sat in front of a display. The door to his lab was locked, the window clarity had been set to opaque and he was ready to do something highly illegal (because laws were for losers).

"Tell me your secrets, oh faceless government organisation," he muttered, fingers flying as he started to hack into SHIELD's database for the umpteenth time.

He hadn't really needed to do too much snooping since he'd been on the helicarrier a few months back, asides from when he could tell Fury wasn't spilling all the beans, but "Mister Potter" was something that definitely warranted his attention.

It wasn't long before he struck gold.

""Lord Harry James Potter, born July 31st, 1980"," he read aloud to JARVIS, who was saving everything to a highly encrypted drive, ""Died May 2, 1998, 12th of August 1998, 5th of November 1998... Holy crap, there's a fucking list!" Tony stared at the screen in awe; this guy had died more often than all the villains they'd _tried_ to kill put together! ""Further deaths after departing England unknown; subject is highly skilled at remaining hidden from SHIELD operatives and tracking devices alike.""

"Shit," Tony murmured as he moved on the biography section. It, too, was sketchy after the man's shift to America, but Tony was enraptured by what he _did_ find out.

A wizard, the guy was an honest to god, wand-waving, broom-riding, autograph signing wizard. In a world as backward as this place seemed to be - and as Tony read further it got more and more backward - where no one knew _his_ name, it was good to know that the public couldn't keep themselves from harassing _someone_. Humanity never changed. Okay, so the last bit was not expected, but apparently the guy was a celebrity hero, somewhat like Tony - rich, powerful family, orphaned. Two peas in a very strange, very mutated pod.

And then there were the deaths. He had been seventeen the first time, and afterwards had been knighted - the guy probably had tea with Her Majesty the Queen on weekends (something that Tony had done on occasion as well). The second was a retaliation murder for the death of the terrorist that Harry had died killing the first time (and holy crap did that sentence make his head spin!). The rest were either revenge attacks, heroic deeds gone awry or a strange incident with a malfunctioning joke-shop trick, all except for the last one. In a particularly gruesome turn, some psychopath had invaded Lord Potter's manor during the night while he slept - thankfully on a night that his adopted son had been at his grandmother's - and had literally ripped him to pieces and scattered them across England. Said attack was reported when Harry himself came in to work late the next morning - the guy was a wizard cop, go figure - chucked the guy in question at his partner's desk and threw his badge on the floor. He was quoted as saying, "I quit! Do you have any idea how long I had to talk to Hela while my body pulled itself back together?"

Tony grimaced at the image; to have had him in ship-shape by morning the bits must have been bolting across the countryside like demented woodland creatures all night long.

"TONY!" a shriek cut his thought off before it could get any weirder, "IF YOU ARE LATE FOR THIS MEETING I WILL NEVER ENTER YOUR BEDROOM AGAIN!"

Tony promptly got off his arse and pulled on a suit jacket, opening the door to grin at a very irate Pepper.

"I was researching?" he attempted with what he knew was his best "innocent" grin.

Pepper glared at him for three whole seconds before her face softened into a fond smile, "You could spend the rest of your life in there "researching" and I'd never see you again," she told him as she led the way out of the labs and towards the exit.

"I'd always come out for you, Pepper."

"Oh god, people, get yourselves a room," Clint called from down the hallway, and Tony flipped him off from behind Pepper's back.

"We have an entire tower, bird-brain. JARVIS, please cut off the air conditioning in Mister Barton's room and whatever training facilities he uses today."

"As you wish, sir."

"Tony!" Pepper chastised.

"Just a bit of fun, Pep, nothing to worry about."

Half an hour later, in the shooting range, Clint cursed the name Stark so hard that even people in Zimbabwe heard him.

* * *

Tony couldn't help but double-take when he saw what looked like Loki taking a stroll in Manhattan. A long black coat, overly long gold scarf and black hair that was swept into a tight, low ponytail. Shorter strands stuck out here and there, though still elegantly; Loki was nothing if not elegant.

Of course, most of the people on the street were giving him equally confused looks; what the hell was Loki doing, casually walking around the city he had nearly destroyed like he owned it?

He shot a glance at Pepper, who nodded that she'd keep the people in the boardroom occupied, before slinking off in the direction that Loki had headed, his Suit Case™ in hand.

There he went; he was headed for Central Park. Tony suddenly wondered if he could go back to the building he'd been having his meeting in and grab a car; he didn't want Loki aware of his follower, so the suitcase suit would be way too obvious. Unfortunately, that meant walking if he didn't want to lose his quarry.

Nearly fifty minutes later, Tony was definitely regretting his foray into espionage. He was certainly learning some new skills - he didn't think he'd ever gone so long unnoticed by the object of his attentions - but the extended period of "bad guy in sight, don't shoot him" was making him ridiculously antsy. He hadn't realised how much he enjoyed shooting at shit until that moment.

And then, suddenly - _finally_ - the villain entered a driveway... into a high school.

The man was picking up a kid! Oh em gee, Tony had just stalked a random stranger around Manhattan; how had he not noticed this? He wondered if he was getting old; maybe he was going senile? Senility was certainly a better option, in his mind, than admitting that his brain had momentarily shorted out and misplaced the entire section that controlled _facial recognition_.

"Dad?" someone called, and Tony realised with dawning horror that not _only_ had he followed this guy around the city for practically an hour, but school was now out - and he had absolutely no reason to be in the area.

"Hey kiddo," replied the man in what was undeniably a British accent - but not Loki's voice, "I was in the neighbourhood, so I decided to come pick you up."

The boy laughed, and Tony blinked at the strange colour of his eyes, "Dad, you practically never leave the house unless Aunty P comes and drags you out somewhere. If you were in the area, then I'm Captain America."

"Nice try at rhyming," said the father, obviously smiling (though Tony couldn't see it from where he was), "But you of all people should know that since last week he's been calling himself "America"."

Tony took this moment to turn and, as discreetly as possible, sprint for Central Park.

'That was "Mister Potter"!' he thought to himself, 'The guy that Fury was after! Why the hell is Fury after a Loki-look-alike with a family?' His mind whirled with questions and hypotheses, but none of them made much sense. Tony blamed his apparent rapid-onset senility.

Tony, and the rest of his team, for that matter, had been under the impression that Fury discounted any heroes with family members out of hand. Familial connections were a liability; even people like Pepper were technically a no-no, but Tony Stark was not going to give up the best thing in his life because Fury said it wasn't "professional".

And then something struck him - according to Steve, his dead friend Harry had black hair, green eyes and a thing for long black coats.

"Oh. My. God," he breathed.

* * *

Natasha lay atop a building across the way from Potter's son's school, watching with bored eyes the very mundane exchange.

Admittedly, watching Tony flee the scene had been amusing but it wasn't why she was here. The reason why she was lying flat on her stomach with a magazine and a notebook in front of her and a set of binoculars in her hand was still talking to his son and not doing anything interesting at all.

It remained this way until Potter the elder slung his arm over Potter the younger's shoulders and they started walking away. They ducked into an alcove that anyone on the street would have trouble seeing into and Natasha wondered what the hell they were doing until-

Potter looked right up at her and grinned. Then both man and son disappeared.

Natasha made a note.

* * *

"Steeeeve," came the call from the kitchen, and said man sighed and popped his head over the top of the couch.

"Yes, Tony?"

"Does the Mister Potter that Fury was after have black hair, green eyes and a startling resemblance to Loki?" he asked innocently. He was completely unprepared for the snarling mass of man that flung itself over the couch at him.

He swore violently and ducked out of the way as Steve lunged for him, rolling in the general direction of safety before getting to his feet and bolting for the elevator.

"STARK!" Steve all but screamed behind him.

"I found out by accident, please don't kill me!" he yelled over his shoulder, not stopping until he was in the elevator and JARVIS had shut the doors behind him.

Unfortunately he hadn't taken into account the extent of Steve's ire; the super-soldier literally _pried open_ the elevator doors. Tony could hear them creaking open above him, and he urged JARVIS to make the elevator go faster. Suddenly there was a loud "bang!" on the roof of the elevator car, and then the ceiling hatch opened and Steve slipped inside, advancing on Tony with the air of a mother bear defending his cubs.

"You will tell _no one_, do I make myself clear?" he asked. He hadn't laid a finger on Tony, but the physical reminder was unnecessary in the face of that _glare_.

"Crystal," Tony said, grinning somewhat uneasily.

There was an extended moment of silence during which Tony watched the numbers above the door tick lower and lower before he turned back to look at his teammate; "Do I get to meet him?"

Steve shot him a look, "Even if I say no, you'll follow me anyway, won't you?"

"Probably."

He glared at him, probably hoping he'd back down. Tony didn't. He sighed, "_Fine_."

"Awesome! JARVIS, take us back upstairs and pick out something for me to wear. Oh, and contact someone to fix the elevator."

"Of course, sir," the AI replied calmly, as if homicide _hadn't_ just nearly been committed within range of his all-seeing sensors.

"And remind me to update your emotion protocols; sarcasm is one thing, nonchalance in the face of your creator's death is another."

"Not today, Tony," Steve told him, still frowning.

"What? Why the hell _not_?" he all but whined, previous near-death experience forgotten.

"I'm seeing him tomorrow-"

"Then-"

"- but you can't come then, either."

Tony pouted.

"I'll take you to see his bar sometime, will that do?"

Tony's smile glowed brighter than the arc reactor.

* * *

It was as she followed Steve and Potter around on a Saturday that Natasha got that tingle down her spine that just screamed "the Avengers need to assemble, _right now_!" and she spun around to see what was happening.

What met her eyes made her groan; on the end of the street stood one of Doom's robots (the big "D" on its chest gave it away). People were already scattering every which way, but the thing was just standing there. And it was looking straight at...

"Captain, DUCK!" she yelled as she threw herself to the side.

The good Captain's reflexes had him on the floor in a second, Potter with him, just a moment before a shot whizzed over their heads.

Steve's head popped up, and Natasha could see that he was looking for something to use as a shield; she wished she'd had the forethought to bring his along.

She turned her attention back to the robot, pulling out her pistol and moving to cover. The civilians could handle themselves.

And then Captain America was there - admittedly out of uniform and technically not "captain" anymore, but who cared? The guy was a super hero, rank or no.

The shield he was holding matched his Vibranium one almost exactly, and Natasha made a mental note; Potter was apparently Steven Strange's long lost twin brother or something. Or Loki's.

The man in question was grabbing people left, right and centre and pulling them into cover or getting them off the street entirely if he could.

Natasha made another note; the guy didn't seem big on fighting, more of a pacifist really. She doubted he would fight for SHIELD if they promised all the money in the world in exchange for his services.

She erased that note when Cap got hit on the shoulder. All the glass still intact between Harry and the robot suddenly shattered, and Potter shifted gears so quickly that Natasha wondered if he suffered from dissociative identity disorder.

He flipped the hood on his coat up and probably did some magical thing to make his eyes shadowed like that; but even without being able to see them you could tell with only a glance that he was as pissed as Clint defending his "nest" on laundry day.

The robot shot repeatedly at the blur that was Harry Potter, but for naught. The guy moved like he'd been doing this for years - Natasha noted that he probably had - and was effortlessly throwing bolts of light at the thing from his hands.

"Widow, get Steve to cover!" he yelled, and she wondered how she was supposed to lift that much muscle; despite her training, she was still much smaller than the blonde.

Thankfully, Steve's legs were still working, and they got behind a somewhat smouldering car in time for another two robots to make an appearance.

"Really?" Potter cried, annoyed.

"Hit them in the neck!" Steve yelled, "It's usually a weak spot!"

Potter dodged another shot and grumbled as he flung a bolt of light at the original robot's neck. It crumpled to the floor instantly, head completely detached from its body.

"Why do bad guys always send groups of three?" he asked, finishing off the other two quickly once that he knew how to. Natasha now knew _exactly_ why Fury wanted this guy tailed; that kind of power was _not_ good in the wrong hands. Doom was the perfect example of this.

The sudden quiet on the street was almost deafening in it intensity, but Potter ignored it like it was normal. Maybe it was for him. He walked over to their spot being the car and knelt before Cap, mouth scrunched in what Natasha assumed was worry.

"You okay, Steve?" he asked, examining the blast wound.

"'M fine," Steve assured him, flinching away when Harry poked at the wound.

"You heal almost as fast as me," Harry told him, lips turned up, before putting a hand over the damaged flesh,

A soft white light emanated from his hand, and in four seconds flat Steve's shoulder was good as new. He flicked his hand and the ashes that had once been his uniform floated from the floor and rearranged themselves to make his suit whole once more.

"Brilliant," Harry murmured, standing. He jumped at the sudden round of applause and spun around to find a crowd of people cheering.

Natasha noted that he didn't try to cast a spell; he was apparently used to asking questions first and shooting later, which was something very much valued in a SHIELD agent, and something she could appreciate.

"Er, hi?"

Things like "amazing" and "totally awesome" were being shouted out, and Potter just smiled and took it; he was a celebrity already, Natasha knew.

"What're you called?" one person asked, and he shrugged.

"Isn't it usually the public and the press who chooses our names?" he asked sagely, "Iron Man, the Hulk, heck, even Cap Am. Just... nothing too weird, please."

* * *

Back at the Dragon's Tongue (which Harry had closed for the night) and Steve was grilling Natasha like her answers would determine the fate of the planet.

"I can't accept that you were just _there_, Natasha. You are not the type of person who wanders New York for no reason, and especially not on a weekend when you usually spend time with Clint. Fury put you up to this, didn't he?"

"Don't fret so much, Steve," Harry told him, placing a drink in front of each of them and seating himself beside Steve at the table, "I knew she was there."

"_What_?" he asked, eyes snapping to his friend's calm countenance.

"Why didn't you call me out on following you earlier?" she asked, and Steve's penetrating stare instantly fixated on her.

Harry smiled, "Allow me make something clear, Widow; as long as you don't hurt me or mine, I don't care how you spend your time."

They finished their drinks faster than one would expect (mostly because both Natasha and Harry really wanted to get away from Steve's demanding eyes) and were at the door when Harry addressed Natasha again.

"Oh, and Widow?" she turned to face him, "Don't go near my son again. I may not be fond of killing people, but when it comes to him my moral priorities tend to shuffle around a bit."

* * *

"What do you have to report, Agent?" Fury asked once Natasha had closed the door behind her.

"Harry Potter is someone who can be defined as a wildcard," she began, staring at the wall behind Fury's head as she related the week's events.

"Any recommendations on action?"

"For now, Capt- Rogers seems to have him under control," she easily lied; Potter was, in truth, about as under Steve's control as the Hulk while throwing a tantrum, "Further surveillance is probably required to assess the extent of that control and how far we can push before he shoves back."

Really, Natasha just wanted an excuse to stalk the man some more; he was _interesting_.

"Thank you, Romanoff. Dismissed."

She nodded and left, and Fury sighed in frustration. What the hell was the world coming to when brats like Potter could lead his agents around by the nose?

He needed a drink.

* * *

""The Black Hood"," Steve announced as he walked into the pub. Harry grinned.

"I know; these people have no imagination whatsoever."

"At least it's not Shadow Face or something," Steve said in their defence - a terrible rebuttal, Harry thought.

"Nah, Shadow Face sounds too villainous. Shadow Cloak, maybe. Anything with the word "face" just reminds everyone of Scarface, and that is not a thing to base your heroes on."

The customary shot was placed before him, along with a pure white cocktail. Steve refrained from asking what "Scarface" was.

"So, Harry, now that you've been bestowed a super hero name..."

"I'm not joining the Avengers, Steve," Harry hastily cut him off, looking slightly panicky, "I was never more relieved in my life than I was the day I decided to flip off the Wizarding World and move far, far away from England."

"You could've moved further," Steve pointed out, before taking the shot. The world in front of his eyes swam for a moment before a sleepy haze seemed to spread over his thoughts and he blinked sleepily. "I mean... you could've gone-" he yawned, "to Japan or Australia... or something..."

Harry chuckled, "Yes, but I rather like the English language, and Australia, while lovely, just didn't make me all warm and fuzzy when I thought about it. Speaking of warm and fuzzy, how are you feeling?"

"Very... _very_ fuzzy. What the _hell_ did you feed me?"

"Morpheus, Greek god of dreams. Don't worry, it'll wear off in a few more seconds."

It did, thankfully, and Steve frowned now that he had full possession of his faculties once more.

"You sell that to people? Is that even legal?"

Harry shrugged, "No, that's one from my personal collection. Stuff like that isn't really date rape material, but you never know with people these days..."

"Anyway, you changed the subject," Steve scolded, jumping right back into his last topic, "Why aren't you willing to join us? And don't give me the "I've served my time" excuse either; I saw you the other day. You can't help being a hero."

"Drink the cocktail, Steve."

"... What is it?"

"Epona. Celtic goddess of horses, and also the goddess of dreams. Because the only time I'm becoming an Avenger is in your dreams."

* * *

**Extra #1: Cactus Fury  
**

"What the hell is that?" Fury asked, coming to a sudden halt upon entering his doorway.

Phil Coulson peeked over his shoulder and his eyes lit up with suppressed laughter.

"That, sir, would be a cactus," he informed his boss with an absolutely straight face. Fury turned to glare at him.

"I can see that, Agent," he ground out, "What I want to know is, _why is it on my desk_?"

Phil moved forward, as casually as if he wasn't walking into dangerous and potentially life-threatening territory, and picked up a small note from next to the cactus.

"Give me that," Fury snapped, snatching the note out of his subordinate's hands before he could read it. Phil took this moment to escape into the night.

Fury's hands tightened on the edge of the heart shaped paper as he read:

_Hey Fury, nice office you got here. Not as nice as mine, but my standards are probably a lot higher._

_Anyway, happy birthday and lots of love from me and Pepper! I got you this cactus to add to the collection already shoved up your arse._

_Lots of love,_

_Tony Stark™_

Approximately thirteen seconds after Phil had left the room, a bellow that sounded like the coming of the apocalypse ripped through the base; "STAAAAAAAARK!"

Back on the mainland, Tony laughed himself hoarse as he watched the footage that was streaming though SHIELD's hacked security feed.

* * *

**AN:** I nearly didn't post this chapter today; you should all feel special that I did (it's 11:32, it's still Sunday, damnit). Next one will probably be a couple of days from now.

* * *

**IN OTHER NEWS:**

I said this was going to end quickly, right? I think I lied. Reviews keep coming in, Fury keeps taking my plot and adding to it (screw you, you slave driver!), and someone (anon, why are you anon?) sent me an idea for a pairing – not slash! – that I found intriguing. So if this story spirals out of control and goes on forever then you can blame that anon.

* * *

**IN YET MORE NEWS:**

... I think Harry's past is going to be fleshed out through a mix of character's snooping, him revealing bits to various people and extra parts like the one above.

* * *

**IN RESPONSE TO REVIEWS (oh look, I rhyme):**

Since anons keep posting really frigging good reviews to my story, I'll just have to reply to their reviews here. Hopefully they will see them.

**Anon:** ... I have boy-love over in my Digimon fic, and that's where it's going to stay. :3

**Anon Guest:** That is a very good idea for a pairing actually. If this story goes longer than I intend it to, I think I can honestly blame you, because I kinda want to explore that...

**Anon:** The drinks are completely made up. Despite being nearly nineteen I don't drink much (Australian legal age is eighteen) and I don't really want to, so I have absolutely no idea what you would have to put into a glass if you wanted to replicate these babies. Sorry!

The irony of someone who doesn't drink writing a story with an alcoholic Muse is not lost on me. XD

* * *

**THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME, I LOVE YOU ALL.**

**THIS TIME YOU GET HULK COOKIES!**

**(I have not given Bruce enough love in this story...)**


	5. Steve And The Meeting Of Enigmas

_"Drinking ... doesn't make you fat, it makes you lean...  
Against bars, tables, chairs, and poles."_

**~ Unknown**

* * *

**Steve and the Meeting of Enigmas**

Tony bugged Steve every day for a week before the star-spangled hero finally threw up his hands and cried, "Alright! Alright! Just- _please_, I'm trying to read!"

Tony really looked far too smug as he walked away, and Bruce looked over at him, concerned; "Are you two fighting again?"

Steve sighed and slumped back on the couch, running a hand through hair that had yet to see a comb that morning, "No, Tony's just bugging me. I told him I'd let him meet Ha- Mister Potter, but I didn't really- that is to say..."

"You don't really want to introduce them."

Steve nodded slowly, "Please don't tell him. He's the least likely to run off and tell SHIELD, asides from you that is, but I just don't think that they're going to... get along."

"Which is code for, "I think Mister Potter is going to kill Tony"?"

"NO! No, never - he wouldn't hurt a fly. They're just so _different_."

"Well, they do say that opposites attract."

Steve suddenly choked on his saliva, and started coughing fitfully. Bruce, meanwhile, had a slight flush staining his cheeks.

"Not that way! I mean, like, well, for example: Tony is the smartest person we know, right? In terms of IQ? Now I'm not saying that the Hulk is stupid, or anything, but those two could be BFFs and never leave each other's sides if I didn't enjoy having my body to myself every now and again."

Steve nodded, still looking rather wild around the eyes.

"Tony mentioned that Mister Potter has a son, didn't he?" Bruce asked, trying to calm him down.

"Adopted," Steve replied weakly.

"Has he ever, I dunno, commented on your looks or something?"

"Yes," he squeaked.

"Well, maybe he's like Tony and flirts with everything that moves?"

"Please stop talking, you're making it worse."

"Sorry."

* * *

Steve had been sending Tony strange glances ever since he'd emerged from his room, ready to go meet The Mysterious Mister Potter, but Tony put it down to the fact that he was still reluctant to let him meet the guy.

The fact that he was suddenly prone to jumping out of anything close to touching range with him was a strike against this hypothesis, but Tony just decided to let it go.

Disregarding his teammate's sudden skittishness, he instructed him to get in the Audi (Steve had wanted to walk, but Tony had all these cars for a reason) and they left, Steve directing him to on how to get to wherever Mister Potter was hiding. It was as they were driving that Tony turned to Steve and asked something that had been bugging him for some time.

"Why didn't Mister Potter help us when Loki attacked? He was in New York at the time, wasn't he?"

Steve raised an eyebrow at the man next to him and told him to turn left at the next street. "He _was_ helping; he was getting civilians out of there."

"Yeah, but he's a freaking wizard!" Steve shot him a look, and he shrugged, "I did my research; SHIELD's info is sketchy and a bit dated, but they do have a file on him. What that file _doesn't_ do is explain why he didn't help us-"

"He died twice that day, Tony."

Tony's teeth clacked shut and his eyes widened in surprise. If thoughts could be seen, his would be blurs of motion. Steve directed him to turn right.

"... Twice?"

"Once when he was pulling someone out of a car and a piece of shrapnel hit him. The second time he was leading a group of people into the subway; one of the chariot things that got shot down hit him as he was about to follow them down."

"... Did I shoot it down?

"No idea; Harry said that all he saw was a grey blur and then Hela."

"Good, it would be awkward meeting him if I'd killed him at some point."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Tony, it's going to be awkward as it is; I haven't even told him that you're coming."

"What? Why not?"

"Because you are Tony Stark, the most famous man on the planet and the most exhibitionist exhibitionist that ever exhibited. As far as I'm aware, Harry doesn't leave the bar unless I drag him out or he has errands to run."

"But I saw him the other day! He walked more than half the length of Central Park to go pick up his son from school!"

"And people mistook him for Loki. Do you see where this is going?"

"... Yeah, right. I forgot about that bit."

Steve sighed, "Pull in here," he said, before turning to glare at Tony as the engine shut off, "I don't know how this is going to pan out, but I swear, if you scare him away by being... _you_, I will hang you off the "A" on the tower by one of your Versace suits."

"Duly noted."

* * *

Steve had thought he was going to have to coax Harry into talking. While he'd seen him chat with people in his bar and he wasn't so shy that he couldn't talk to people when they went for walks, Steve had never _forced_ him into a social situation before; Harry seemed content to avoid them altogether. Instead, he found he was rather concerned over the staring contest going on between his two friends.

On one side of the bar stood Harry, who had been cleaning the same glass ever since the strange competition had begun. He was examining Tony with the tiniest smile on his face, like he knew _exactly_ who this man was (and not just his public persona), why he was sitting in his bar and how he came to be there. On the other side, next to Steve, sat Tony. _He_ was watching Harry with a grin holding a mix of obvious interest and whatever it was that made everyone want to strangle and bear-hug him at the same time.

"Please just get him something to drink before I throw a stool at one of you," he pleaded, earning two surprised glances.

Harry put down the glass with a different sort of smile entirely; "Sure thing, Steve. Sorry about that."

He pulled down a bottle that Steve had never tried before, full of a deep maroon liquid, and filled three-quarters of a tumbler with it. The rest of the glass was filled with water, and the finished product looked somewhat like bloody water.

"Nabu," he said.

"What did you call me?" Tony asked as he pulled the drink towards him, sniffing it.

"The red stuff is called Nabu," Harry said with a grin, "A Mesopotamian deity; he was the god of scribes, writing and wisdom."

Tony nodded his approval and took a sip.

"He was also occasionally seen as a god of water, hence the way I served it."

Tony blinked as he suddenly felt like he'd been dunked in a stream, despite being completely dry. He'd have to see how Potter did that.

"And, sometimes, a fertility god, which I thought appropriate for you, Mister Stark."

Tony grinned at Harry, something which worried Steve to no end, "It's not going to make me jump someone, is it?" Harry shook his head with an answering grin, "I _like_ you. Can we keep him?" he asked, turning to Steve.

Steve rolled his eyes, but at the same time he was wondering who the man across the bar from them was; Harry had always seemed so _collected_ when he was with Steve - asides from the run in with Doom's lackeys, which was understandable, really.

Harry, as usual, guessed what he was thinking instantly.

"You thought I was some kind of hermit, didn't you?" Harry asked with a smirk, and Steve flinched.

"Well, you always seem to be here when I come by, so..."

Harry sighed, "Steve, you don't have to worry about me. Just because the majority of my friends live in England doesn't mean that I haven't made new ones here. Admittedly, most of them are parents of Teddy's friends or regular customers, but that's part of being a working parent; you make friends at work and through your kid."

Tony was nodding sagely through all of this, though gods knew the man probably hadn't known any of it two minutes ago, and piped up, "Yeah, Pepper told me that one of her friends has a kid. Said that the only reason she ever saw him at all was because she _made_ him make time.

The smile that split Harry's face was absolutely evil, but it was gone so fast that neither Steve nor Tony was sure it'd even really been there.

"You two have _no_ idea," he informed them, before taking down another bottle, "I hope you plan to call your driver after this, Mister Stark; I plan to have you drink enough that even the Æsir will be impressed with your fortitude."

* * *

In his room that evening, Steve frowned as he thought about the predicament he'd created for himself. He realised that he was going to have to tell the rest of his teammates the story of "Mister Potter" eventually, but...

A sudden spark of irritation bloomed in his gut at the thought; why the hell did he have to share the one thing he had outside of the Avengers? Asides from Bruce, they all had something to do and people to talk to outside of their mutual superhero gig. He was alone but for Harry. He had nothing to do outside of Avengers business other than visit Harry and Teddy and hear about their (literally) magical lives and all of the absolutely out of this world adventures they'd had in exchange for stories of his own.

Thor had his family, Jane and _training to be the god-damned ruler of a world_ to keep him occupied. Natasha and Clint had each other, Agent Coulson and SHIELD to keep them busy. Tony had Pepper, Colonel Rhodes and Happy (and JARVIS, he supposed). Hell, _Bruce_ had _Tony_, and Steve was pretty sure he'd made friends with that check-out guy at his organic grocery store, too.

Steve had decades old memories of a world that no longer existed and a grand total of one real friend to confide in.

Unlike Bruce, he couldn't lean on his teammates in times of need. He was their leader; it was his job to lead and be leant on, not tell them before a battle that he was worried or scared. What good was a leader that didn't inspire confidence in those he led?

The only person on this Earth he could talk to about everything and anything at all was Harry, and he didn't WANT to share.

He snorted as he took off his shirt and threw it in the laundry chute; he sounded like a child whose toy was about to be taken away.

He could honestly say that he didn't give a damn.

* * *

**Extra #2: The Hawk's Nest**

"Your room is a damn pigsty, Barton," Tony said, horrified, standing in the doorway.

"Have you ever heard of knocking?" Clint asked dryly, looking up from where he was reclining on his "bed", a StarkTablet™ in hand.

"Knocking? Who the fuck cares about knocking? How do you move around in here?" he gestured, obviously distressed, at the piles of clothes, books, shiny things, what looked like highly classified documents and all manner of archery paraphernalia.

"I've seen your lab, Tony, and it's no better than in here."

"At least my shit stays on the damn tables! It's like the nest of some horrible-"

"Bird?" Clint interrupted with a grin, "Maybe a hawk?"

"Actually, it looks like a giant and very messy bowerbird tried to impress another, _schizophrenic_, female bowerbird. I'm sure he must have succeeded."

"Fuck you, Stark."

"Clean your room!"

"What are you, my dad?"

"No, but the concept of "my house, my rules" applies."

"You never even come in here!" Clint protested, sitting up in agitation.

"I'm here now aren't I? Do it for the cleaner's sake, at least! Jesus Christ, you'd think I was asking for your first-born or something."

o0o0o

"Clint," Natasha said as she entered the room.

"Yes, Nat my lovely?" he asked from where he was arranging a shirt on top of a pile of what looked like bottle caps.

"It's laundry day."

Clint looked up with ridiculously round eyes.

"You can't!"

"I can and I will," she said, moving forward. Behind her, Steve and Bruce stood in the doorway, looking around the room in abject horror. She had brought the two neat freaks with her, the traitorous woman.

"This is an intervention, Clint," she continued, still advancing towards his latest pile of stuff - he'd only just finished that one!

"It's for your own good," Steve said firmly, gingerly stepping over what looked like a set of explosive arrow tips.

"And probably ours too," Bruce put in, "Who knows what things could be festering in here."

"Nothing is festering, I keep it clean!"

"_How_?" asked Tony from the bedroom door.

Clint spun and growled at him; "_You_!"

"Yes, me. My house, my rules. You are getting help. Thor, grab him."

From behind Tony came Thor, Mjölnir at his hip and a grim look on his face.

During the struggle that ensued, ostensibly to get him to go to a therapist specialising in hoarding, the clean-up team of three began their raid. The last thing Clint saw of his nest as he was carried away, slung over Thor's shoulder, was Natasha throwing his bottle cap collection into a huge green garbage bag.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

* * *

**AN:** Oh, Clint, the fun I could have with you. (mwahaha!)

Okay, so this chapter was supposed to be longer, but I wanted to post something today and for that to happen I had to chop it in half.

Sorry about that; rest assured that more is coming!

* * *

**Clarification on the Opening Scene**

This story is still not slash. I hadn't planned that scene originally, it just appeared. Probably a reflection of the conflicting reviews on the subject!

* * *

**Response to Anon's Review About Anons:**

I didn't know that anon means "no one", but it's certainly interesting to think about! Here I am writing, writing responses to no one. -sad face-

* * *

As always, thank you all so much for the reviews~

You make my heart sing, whether you only wrote a word or half a page, and especially if I went back and changed something for the better because of your comment!

Oh, and a special shout out to Phantom Feline: stop making me giggle; people keep giving me funny looks on the train. –stern face-

~ Runaway


	6. Steve and the Calm Before The Storm

_"The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober."_

**~ William Butler Yeats**

* * *

**Steve and the Calm Before the Storm****  
**

Weeks passed as usual. Harry ran his pub, Teddy went to school. Aunty P came by three times to take them on outings and he had lunch with the parents of Teddy's friends (wearing his "old man" glamour, of course). The Black Widow continued to follow him around, various villains wrought havoc on various parts of various countries and Steve visited whenever he wasn't off saving the world.

Occasionally - and reluctantly if his disgruntled expression was anything to go by - Steve brought Tony along, too. Harry and Tony got on like a house on fire most of the time, excluding when Tony wanted to stick needles in Harry or Harry wanted to explore the strange energy that the arc reactor emitted.

Given that everything was going so smoothly, the Fates obviously decided that it was time for Harry to go on a treacherous journey that was probably life-threatening.

So it was that Tony called to invite him up to the tower for dinner, which meant meeting the rest of Steve's friends. All at once. Gods help him.

The Widow (Harry refused to call her Natasha, as they hadn't been properly introduced) obviously already knew that he was both Mister Potter and Steve's Dead Friend Harry. Tony knew too. That was only three out of six, though; and Steve was showing no signs of _wanting_ to tell them either. He was being down right territorial, in fact, and while it gave Harry the warm fuzzies, he knew that eventually Steve was going to have to give in and tell them.

And soon, too, because dinner was on Friday, and he really didn't want to wear a glamour for the whole evening. Especially while dining with a god; it was all sorts of bad form.

The night of the visit he buzzed around his cellar with enough nervous energy to power the Empire State building all by his lonesome.

"Dad, just take the Odinsleep; Steve said that Thor liked that one, right?" Teddy told him from the doorway. Sometimes the kid was more of an adult than Harry; and soon he'd look it too.

"Yeah, but they've already tried that. Besides, I'm not trying to send them into comas, I just want to make them _like me_!" he fretted as he tried to choose between the Galene Vodka (which represented calm seas and, hopefully, overall calm) and the Kaumodaki (for continued victories).

"They're not going to even know what they mean unless you tell them, Dad. Just take the Kaumodaki; if by some miracle they do know, they'll appreciate the gesture more."

Harry snatched up the bottle and turned to grab his son by the shoulders; "You are my hero, never leave me," he said, pulling him into a hug.

Teddy snorted; "Go get ready, Steve'll be here soon."

Harry nodded and patted his son on the shoulder, taking the bottle with him as he left.

Once he was inside his bedroom he closed the door and sighed; he wasn't _really_ that nervous, but he didn't want Teddy to worry. If it looked like he was going into battle, Teddy would _definitely_ worry.

"Gods help me," he murmured, setting the alcohol on the dresser and turning to his closet to think up something to wear.

* * *

"Oh, um, hi," Steve said, blinking at the blonde kid that opened the door to the Dragon's Tongue (currently closed; Harry's bar hadn't been closed this often since right after the Chitauri attack), "Are Harry or Teddy around?"

The kid looked confused for a moment before his mouth formed a small "o" and he waved Steve inside.

He led Steve to the third floor where Harry's room was and then bowed out, heading back downstairs to the living room.

Steve knocked.

"Come in~," came the sing-song reply, and Steve chuckled and entered.

"Should I be afraid?"

"Is the sky blue?" Harry shot back, staring into his wardrobe with a look of deep concentration.

"And what, exactly, are you doing in here?"

"I'm trying to figure out what to wear," for indeed, Harry was dressed in pyjama pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt.

"... Why not go _into_ the wardrobe then?"

Harry's eyes flickered to meet his before he quickly looked away again, "Oh, you know; working on my imagination, trying to decide so I don't have to make more than one trip, severe claustrophobia," he rattled off, and Steve frowned at the last.

"You're afraid of enclosed spaces? That doesn't seem very... _you_."

Harry shrugged, "It's a product of my upbringing."

At Steve's confused face he shook his head; "Don't ask."

Then he turned, stood up straight and bolted into the walk-in like the interior was on fire and he was rescuing kittens from the blaze.

Moments later he returned, looking far paler than usual and grinning in a way that looked more sick than happy.

"Get out of my room, Steve;" he ordered, "I'm not comfortable being nearly naked in front of other people."

Steve frowned; "Another product of your "upbringing"?" he asked.

Harry snorted; "I lived in a dorm with four other boys for six years; I'm not shy. I just don't want you saying anything about... the other _actual_ things that I got while I was a kid."

Steve thought about that for a moment, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Harry sighed; "Just go, Steve. I want to be ready on time."

He opened his mouth to retaliate, but the pleading look on Harry's face made him back down. "We'll talk about this later," he insisted gruffly, turning to leave.

"Despite your being born in 1922, I'm mentally older than you; you are not my mother!" Harry called as the door closed, and Steve rolled his eyes.

Out in the hallway, the blonde boy was leaning against the wall opposite the door. Steve tilted his head slightly.

"So are you a friend of Teddy's?" he asked, and the kid grinned.

"Nope," he said, and Steve started at the voice.

"_Teddy_?" he asked, and "Teddy" laughed.

"Yup!" he chirped and then, to Steve's consternation, his face began to shift around and his hair changed back to black and his eyes to yellow.

"How did you _do_ that?" Steve asked with wonder, and Teddy's grin grew wider.

"I got it from my mum; she was a metamorphmagus, which means that she could change her features however she wanted them to look."

Steve frowned, "Wait, so... what do you really look like?"

Teddy frowned and his face changed a little, his hair becoming mousey brown but his eyes only dimmed slightly, still more gold than brown.

"You make it so that you look more like your dad," Steve realised, smiling.

"Yeah," Teddy said, somewhat shyly, "'Cause when I'm like this I look like my birth father. He was one of dad's father's best friends, so I think it really hurts to be reminded that he's gone."

"Because not all wizards live forever," it was more a statement than a question.

"Only dad," Teddy agreed, his appearance returning to the one that Steve knew as Teddy.

"Sorry to break up the angst-fest," Harry poked his head out of the door, "but are we gonna get going or no?"

Teddy snorted, and the momentary depression that had settled in the hallway lifted, "Go make friends with the scary super-people, dad. I'll just chill out here and watch Transformers or something."

"No wild parties," Harry warned, and Teddy stuck his tongue out.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Harry ruffled his son's hair, and they made their down the stairs and out to the waiting car.

* * *

Bruce pulled nervously at his shirt and tried not to gnaw on his lip. He didn't really want to think about why Tony had invited the mysterious "Mister Potter" up to the tower. Ever since they'd met, the billionaire had been poking and prodding at him, trying to see just what it took to bring out the other guy. Bruce couldn't help but feel that this yet was another test.

Tony _was_ a good friend, despite his quirks; the other guy was certainly fond of him, something that never ceased to surprise Bruce.

Unfortunately the mystery surrounding their guest - and the nerves that were inherent in such mysteries - were making the other guy snarl like General Ross had just walked into the room and poked him in the eye.

Bruce _sincerely_ hoped that he didn't hulk out on meeting Mister Potter.

There was really no way to apologise for releasing a giant green rage monster on someone; "Oh, I'm sorry for taking out all of my considerable anger management issues on you," he would say, "My apologies for killing your friend, Steve; you up for shawarma?"

No, this entire thing was a bad idea. And besides, Fury would be furious when he found out that they'd had dinner with someone that they were all probably obligated to hand over to SHIELD on sight.


	7. Steve And The Storm

_"Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony."_

**~ Robert Benchley**

* * *

**Steve and the Storm**

Harry paused and stared up at the tower. He wasn't scared; he was awed. The thing wasn't _huge_; it wasn't the tallest of buildings, certainly, but it was bulky - ugly, Steve called it - and contained at least five of the most heroic people on the planet, because Steve was standing beside him. Perhaps that's what made it seem bigger.

"Don't be nervous," Steve said from his side, and Harry smiled that little one that usually calmed Steve down.

"I'm not," he replied, eyes flickering to the doors, "I just don't know what to expect."

"So, you're nervous."

"Shut up, Steve. The last time I walked into a place with this many powerful people around I died for the first time, so don't mock me."

Steve winced, and Harry sighed.

"Low blow, sorry. I guess I _am_ nervous."

"I'll say," Steve murmured and Harry whacked his arm.

"Right then, are you going to escort me inside like a proper gentleman, or are we-" he cut himself off as Steve jumped at least two metres away from him.

"Um... I was kidding?" he said, watching Steve's eyes flicker like he was reliving something very uncomfortable.

"Let's just... go..." Harry said, gesturing towards the doors and then moving towards them.

Steve managed to compose himself before Harry got to the front desk, so he didn't have to explain himself to the receptionist and got a free ride up to the penthouse to boot.

'I _really_ need to know what the hell happened to make him so skittish," he thought, before his face split into a fond smile, "Idiot."

Steve started and looked up at him, and Harry coughed on realising that he'd said that aloud, stepping into the elevator doors that had just opened.

"Which is to say "I'm not hitting on you when I joke about stuff like that, I'm making a crack at your age"," he explained, and was satisfied when realisation dawned in Steve's eyes as the doors closed again.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, "It's just... Someone said something about you and Tony and I kind of-"

"Freaked the fuck out?"

"... Yeah."

They stood in silence for a moment, watching the numbers go up, and then Harry laughed, "I thought you said you didn't really talk to your teammates in a casual setting?"

Steve blinked. "I don't. Well, I didn't _before_."

"N'aww, I made you a better person. I'm so proud that I'm capable of fathering even people that really shouldn't need it."

"Quiet, you, I'm thinking," Steve told him, pondering what he had just realised.

He _had_ been more relaxed with his team since he'd started meeting up with Harry. He supposed he could put it down to the fact that having a confidante eased his stressed mind immeasurably, but really it was probably a mixture of a few things. Harry hadn't just helped him get better at socialising - imagine that, the introvert was helping him become more social - he'd taught him a lot about the world he now inhabited. That was equally strange, really; a boy born in ignorance of almost everything, who would probably stay in his house forever except for other people dragging him out and about, had taught _him_, someone who was desperately lost in the modern world, how to live in it.

The doors opened.

Harry glanced at Steve for reassurance, though he would never admit it, and Steve knew that he still didn't want to share him. At this point they had no choice, though, and together they walked forward.

* * *

"So, what have we learned?" asked Tony as he spun to face his compatriots. Steve was going to kill them when he found out they'd been watching the security footage during their assent, but Clint had insisted on seeing Potter before meeting him and Thor had agreed. Bruce had been very quiet on the subject, and the other two had already _met_ the guy, so they trooped into Tony's lab and stared avidly for the short amount of time they had.

"That I should keep my mouth shut," Bruce muttered, drawing quizzical glances.

"Okay, so we know who put weird thoughts about hot Stark on Potter action into Steve's head, but that doesn't really help those that haven't _met_ the guy yet."

Thor frowned, "We have learned that Friend Steve is comfortable with Mister Potter, more at ease than he is with us."

"Yes we have; every time Harry's there, Steve is waaaaay more receptive to my jokes."

"Holy crap," Clint murmured, "Potter's a miracle worker."

"Ha ha, very funny, shut up."

"Mister Potter can handle himself in a combat situation," Natasha informed them, and Tony hit a few keys. What looked like CCTV footage started playing on the screen, an angle of what was obviously Potter's battle against Doom's goons.

"I hacked this straight from the source; not even SHIELD has this footage," he informed the proudly, before sending the assassins a look, "and I expect it to stay that way."

"Sure thing," Clint replied, "So he really is magic?" he asked before Natasha could disagree or scold him, "Like Loki?"

"Not really," Natasha said, giving Clint a disapproving look, "He's from a secret community of similar people. He was born in the UK, but they're spread over the entire world."

"And I didn't know about this?" asked Clint, gobsmacked.

"I knew that humans had the capacity for magic," Thor put in, looking confused, "I am surprised that you did not. Are you not educated in such crafts when you are young?"

"Not that this isn't fascinating, or anything," Tony interrupted before anyone could reply, "but Steve and friend are looking a bit nervous. Maybe we should make an appearance?"

The group all agreed and made for the door.

* * *

"I get the feeling that I should be terrified by the silence," Harry announced to Steve and the empty room.

To the side was a small-ish bar, to the other was a small living area, and Harry could see that around the corner there was probably a staircase or two leading to the other communal areas that Steve had told him about.

Steve was getting antsy too, but then his team all came tumbling from the staircase. Unfortunately, this did nothing to alleviate his anxiety.

"Harry!" called Tony, moving forward to lead the group, "How've you been?"

"Good," Harry said with a smile, "How's the lifestyle of the rich and famous?"

"Pretty cool, as always, but then you'd know that if you'd buy yourself a tower like me."

"Unlikely to ever happen."

"A_hem_," Steve interrupted, and both men looked up at him with identical blinks.

"Sorry," they said together, and Clint whistled.

"It's like the Twilight Zone or something. Look like Loki-" Harry made a face "- act like Tony, fight like Jedi. You're like a conglomeration of really fucking weird people."

"It's nice to meet you too," Harry mumbled, "You must be Clint Barton, Hawkeye. Which makes you Bruce Banner, the Hulk," he continued, smiling at Bruce, who offered a somewhat bemused smile in response, "and..."

His eyes turned to Thor, and he offered the man a deep bow, complete with a complicated hand gesture.

"Thor Odinsson of Asgard," he said once he'd come back up. Thor bowed back, though not as low.

"Harry Potter of Midgard," he boomed back, and everyone but himself winced at the volume, "You have shown me great respect by you greeting, something which I have not encountered since coming to this realm!"

Harry coughed, embarrassed, "A product of my upbringing," he informed him, and Steve shot him a _look_ that the rest of the Avengers noted.

"Not that one," Harry said without looking at Steve, "Oh, and I brought alcohol," he said happily, pulling a bottle from a coat pocket that really shouldn't have been able to fit it.

"How do you _do_ that?" Tony hissed, barely restraining himself from running over and stuffing his hand down that pocket.

"Magic," he said with a grin, and offered the bottle towards him. When Tony made no move to grab it, Bruce gingerly moved forward instead.

"Kaumodaki?" he read the label, a tiny glitter of something warm in his eyes, "The mace of Vishnu?"

"I told my son that someone would get it; he didn't believe me," Harry said ruefully, "How did you know?"

"I travelled a lot. I actually made dinner tonight, as well. Speaking of, why are we all still standing here; food's been ready for half an hour."

"You told us we couldn't eat it!" Clint complained, before running towards the staircase and towards his food.

Bruce snorted, "I meant before the guest arrived," he said, and Harry laughed.

"Mate, the pain I go through with my son must be _nothing_ compared to yours."

"Oh, I imagine it's similar. What does this drink symbolise, by the way? Does it mean anything different than in the stories?"

"Not really..."

The two chattering men made their way down to the living room, Natasha and Thor following behind, and left Tony and Steve to stand alone in the room.

"You proud that your baby's finally growing up?" Tony finally asked, smirking at Steve, "He was your latest fixer-upper project after me, wasn't he?"

"Shut up, Tony," Steve snapped, walking swiftly to the stairs.

Tony shrugged before following at a more sedate pace; anger over something like that wasn't really his style.

* * *

Steve took his usual spot at the head of the table, Harry seated at his right as a guest and Tony to the left because, "It's my tower, god damn it!"

Bruce sat himself beside Harry, and the two were still chattering away; Harry was telling the biologist about his werewolf uncle and Bruce was quite obviously fascinated by such a strange phenomena (and not at all because it reminded him of himself).

Beside Tony, Thor was to sit, and then Natasha, with Clint sitting opposite her on the other side of Bruce.

Thor, after seating himself, examined their guest with some interest.

The boy - for he looked to be barely on the cusp of manhood - was not what he had expected Mister Potter to be. Some part of him was laughing and declaring that someone so scrawny who relied on magic could not possibly warrant his concern, but he had learned his lesson from Loki; magic and wit were sometimes more powerful than brawn.

It was that lesson that made him examine Mister Potter - Harry, as he preferred to be known - more closely. He chattered away with Friend Bruce with a gentle expression that was apparently fixed on his face, and did not seem all that remarkable, except for his eyes. _Those_ glimmered in a way that only a powerful magic-master could accomplish; Loki's eyes were the same, though those ones only sparked with anger when he came into view.

Harry's would light up every time he glanced over at Thor, and the Crown Prince of Asgard couldn't help the feeling of pride that bubbled in his chest when this happened; this man knew of his deeds and respected him as he ought, something that no one on Earth had done since time immemorial.

"And Fury tracked you down? In _Calcutta_?" Harry asked, aghast.

"He really wanted me on the team, I guess," Bruce answered mildly, piling food onto Harry's plate for him.

"I was there on holiday last year; the man must have been having fits with us being in such close proximity!" Harry laughed, accepting his plate back, "Thank you."

"You travel often, yes?" asked Natasha.

"Most years," Harry said cautiously, "Though I'm sure you already knew that; I don't try to hide when I'm on vacation."

"_Why_ exactly is Fury after you?" asked Clint, looking somewhat befuddled by it.

"Wants me under his thumb, probably," Harry shrugged, stabbing a piece of some sort of fowl, "This is really good, by the way," he complimented Bruce, "The first time he sent an agent to spirit me away was right after I'd finished off a terrorist cell back in England-"

"Magical terrorists," Natasha put in, and Harry frowned.

"Thank you, Widow. As I was saying, I offed their leader, they fell apart and then suddenly there were three suits at my door with a folder and a really weird proposition. I, being just out of a warzone, nearly blasted them halfway to Guadalajara and almost created an international incident."

"That'd get his attention," Steve said dryly, and the rest of the table looked up, stunned at this glimpse of humour. _Steve was not supposed to have a sense of humour_.

"Oh, it did," Harry smirked, "By the time he arrived himself, though, myself and his agents had reconciled our differences and were playing Exploding Snap in my den."

"And so began the corruption of SHIELD agents," Natasha said, and Harry's smirk widened.

"That in my file as well?"

"Yup," Tony interrupted, "It's almost the best part of the whole thing; you can almost hear Fury's agony as he writes up the list of people you've turned against him, its glorious."

"You read my file?"

"And you didn't let _me_ read it too?" asked Clint, obviously anguished, "Why does everyone but me know everything about-"

"I read your file a while back," Tony cut Clint off, making Steve send him a strange look, "and I was wondering; how long _were_ you dead before your bits and pieces made it back to you? Did they really scamper all the way across England to get back to where you'd died?"

Harry's forehead creased, and he ignored Steve's horrified stare in order to answer the question, "Eleven hours, if you're talking about the Christmas of '99. And yes, they ran, skipped and crawled; if he'd dumped some in the sea they probably would have swum back too."

Tony made an "ick" face but Steve was starting to look rather intense, to Harry's consternation; "_How_ many times have you been dismembered, exactly?"

Bruce grimaced, "Is this really a dinner topic?"

"Alright, fine," Tony grumbled, pouting, "How did you come up with names for all of your drinks; those shelves had how many pantheons exactly?"

"I couldn't tell you how many; some of them overlap and some of them are from older versions of the same one," Harry informed them, obviously happy to talk about his passion, "Mostly it's because I read a lot."

"Seriously? You just sit around and read? Have you ever died from boredom?"

"_Tony_!" a chorus of voices scolded, and the billionaire took on the air of a kicked puppy.

Harry laughed; "Most years I take Teddy during his summer vacation and we go explore the wonders of the ancient world," he said, grinning, "so I learnt some that way, too. Most of them are just a potent mix of curiosity and boredom."

"But you're so rich! Not as rich as me, of course, but you're practically rolling in it. Why are you not driving fast cars and buying mansions?"

"Not everyone is a speed-demon like you, Tony," Steve growled.

"Emphasis on the "demon"," Clint muttered.

Harry smirked, "Actually, I always buy the fastest broom on the market; flying is _so_ much more fun than sitting in a seat turning a wheel. And I don't buy houses, I trade in stocks."

"Ah yes, stocks," Tony said, making a face.

"Don't knock it, mate; without people like me refusing to bail out on people like you, there would be no economy."

"You're invested in Stark Industries, then?"

"This is another topic that really shouldn't be included as dinner conversation," Clint interrupted, looking miffed, "Can we _please_ talk about something that everyone at the table understands?"

"How about how your hoarding management sessions are going?" Natasha quipped, and Clint scowled at her.

"You are no longer my lovely."

"Favourite foods?" Bruce put in, looking over at the bottle, "I can't really think of anything unintelligent to talk about, unfortunately for Clint."

"You are now my favourite hero," Harry told him, smiling widely.

"Speaking of heroes," Steve started, looking a bit put out.

"Not joining," Harry quickly cut in, frowning at Steve, who frowned back harder.

Before the frown war could expand to include words, Tony offered his own two cents; "Oh, you say no now. But one day, you'll agree to be a consultant, and the BAM! Suddenly you have a small army of freaks and gods taking up your space and eating all your food and drinking all your good booze because the stuff where they're from just isn't as tasty." Thor had the good grace to look sheepish, and Harry laughed.

"Gooble gobble, gooble gobble, one of us, one of us," Clint intoned, still looking at Bruce with an aggrieved expression.

"They'd better not drink my stuff," Harry replied, grinning at Clint, "because if my profits drop the difference will come out of their pocket."

"And what if we do not carry money in our pockets, Friend Harry?" Thor asked, looking puzzled.

"Then I'll cut off your hair, and wear it as proof of my cunning," he replied grinning, and the replying flicker of humour in Thor's eyes didn't disappoint.

"Are you sure you are not a descendant of my brother?" he asked, smiling wide, "You seem so alike."

Harry shrugged, "Who knows, I could be. The Potter men have looked pretty much the same for generations, though the green eyes come from my mother."

"Wouldn't it be interesting if you found out that both of your parents were descended from Loki?" Bruce pondered, and Harry snorted and made a face.

"Great, I was so happy that I'd managed to avoid the inbreeding that happens in the English Wizarding community, but apparently not."

"Well, you know you're from England when..." Tony started. Steve looked about ready to stab him with his fork, but then Harry laughed.

"It's terrible, really. The wizards in England are just so closed-minded, you see. One half of the reason I moved here was because everyone, even the wizards, knows what a television is."

"And the other half?" asked Thor.

"Sunlight penetrates to ground level here," he replied dryly, and Clint snorted.

Dinner progressed thusly, with banter and idiocy and Harry relating some of the more fun aspects of his life.

Clint eventually got over the fact that everyone but him (and Thor, and Bruce) knew all about the wizard and started a minor pea-war with Tony over Bruce's head until the man started looking a little pea-coloured around the eyes and they stopped.

Harry couldn't quite coax Steve into talking as they usually did alone, but he _did_ get him to be snarky a couple of times, and considered it a victory.

And then Thor asked, "Do you have a spouse?" and Clint perked up.

"Oh yeah, you keep mentioning a son, but-"

"Sometimes, Clint, I wonder if you have any brain-mouth filter at all," Steve informed them, and the table was shocked into silence again."

Harry cleared his throat, "No, I don't have a wife," he answered Thor's question, "but I had a fiancée."

"Do we get to hear about her?" asked Tony, ignoring Steve's disapproving look.

"Not much to tell, really" He said mildly, "She wanted to stay with her family, I wanted to escape the entire world, she chose them over me and my son. I understood, of course; she wanted me to ship him over to his grandmother's in the first place because she was "too young to be looking after children"," he shrugged, "So we left and I never turned back. We visit every few years, though. Oh, but she had her first child about four years after we were gone; it was quite funny, really."

"Then she is not fit to be the mother of your child, to turn and do such a thing after rejecting you in such a way!" Thor boomed, righteous anger written all over his face.

Harry smiled his calm smile and shrugged, "Some people need to find themselves before they can be parents," he said, bringing Thor down, "I'd already done that, but G- she hadn't. So we parted. I'm too young for her now, anyway," he grinned.

"Why _is_ that, by the way?" Clint asked.

"The first time I died was when I was seventeen. I guess my chronometer got stuck there."

"Aaaand that's the end of _that_ conversation," Steve interrupted, rising, "Come on, let's play Guitar Hero."

"I've never touched an instrument in my life and you want me to play a music game?" Harry asked as Bruce and Tony exchanged a glance.

"Doesn't matter, we can change the setting to easy," Tony said, jumping on the chance to play with some tech – any sort of tech – and standing to grab the Kaumodaki and move towards the staircases, "We can play my special version."

"Should I be afraid?" he asked as everyone rose. Bruce started clearing the table and Harry lent a hand.

"Less cleaning more playing!" Tony called from the stairs, and Steve snorted.

Harry, Bruce and Steve cleared the table and put everything in the kitchen (from whence the cleaner could take care of it), before heading upstairs to spend the rest of the evening playing video games. The night culminated in Thor threatening to throw Mjölnir at the television and Bruce sending Clint through a wall.

"Did anyone else notice that he didn't say his kid's name the entire night?" asked Clint after Harry had made his farewells and left, Steve accompanying him.

"He didn't, did he?" Bruce replied, looking thoughtful. Clint cringed away, rubbing the side of his chest.

"It's some sort of protection spell or something; Harry told me," Tony said, tapping away as he played an FPS, "Something in Latin; unless he or the kid tell you his name, you won't remember it."

"What seriously?" Clint asked, sitting up with a wince.

"His name, what he looks like, anything about him as a person just disappears from your brain once he leaves your range of vision."

"Amazing," Bruce murmured.

"Paranoid," Clint scoffed.

"It's not paranoia if they're really after you," Natasha informed him and Thor boomed a laugh.

"Indeed, Lady Natasha, indeed!"

* * *

"Note to self:" Harry laughed as Steve walked him back to his house, "Do not make insinuations about Bruce's anything. _Ever_."

"He _has_ been known to throw his weight around when he gets angry," Steve said, and Harry laughed again. It echoed through the early morning air, the street they were on mostly empty; even the city that never slept couldn't party forever.

"I like him, by the way."

"I could tell," Steve told him, and Harry raised a brow.

"And I could tell that you could tell," he informed him, "Because _while_ we were getting along you were not a happy Captain."

"Former Captain."

"You were an unhappy Avenger. You were _unhappy_ that I was making friends with your teammates. Why?"

Steve remained silent, and Harry sighed, "Okay then, don't to tell me."

They walked three blocks before Steve spoke again; "I noticed that you grinned every time Tony mentioned Pepper."

"Ah, you did, did you? Care to hazard a guess as to why?"

"You know her, somehow. I have no idea _how_, but you do."

"This is true. It's also another link to another Avenger; does that make you pissy too?"

"Just drop it."

"I'm a stubborn old man, Steve," Harry stated, sounding more chipper than he looked, "and I'm rather set in my ways. When I want to find out something I do it; sometimes it takes me a year or seven, but gods help me if I don't figure it out eventually. Best to tell me now before I start using my psychic powers for my own benefit."

Steve looked understandably alarmed at this; "You're psychic!?"

Harry snorted; "No; if I was I'd be a mutant, not a wizard."

Steve muttered something about them being the same thing and Harry rolled his eyes, "We've been around just as long as you boring normal people have, Steve. Mutants are relatively new developments in human evolution."

"Are you _sure_?"

"Trust me; if there's one thing I know about, it's wizards. Unfortunately."

"That childhood of yours-"

"If you show me yours, I'll show you mine."

Steve clammed up again and they walked the rest of the way in silence.

"You're going to have to tell me eventually," Harry said as he stood on his top step.

"If you show me-"

"Oh, shut up, Steve," he huffed and opened the door, "And don't come back until you can tell me why you're so jealous."

"I'm not-"

"Good night!" and the door slammed in his face.

"Nice one, Steve," a voice came from above him, and Steve looked up to find Teddy hanging out of his third storey bedroom window, "That looked like something out of a really clichéd romantic comedy."

"Thank you, Teddy; you make me feel so much better about all of this," he quipped, and Teddy changed his hair to bright orange in response.

"Welcome," he said, before his head retracted and the window shut.

"Crazy, stubborn wizards," Steve muttered to himself as he walked away, "All of them, completely insane."

Harry watched him walk off and snorted; "Idiot," he said fondly, before shutting the curtains.

* * *

"Report."

"I think you may want to add to Harry's file that he is possibly a telepath," Natasha announced, straight to the point.

Her use of Potter's first name did not go unnoticed to Fury, who ignored it in favour of swearing under his breath at the thought of yet another talent he hadn't known Potter possessed.

"And what makes you say that?" he queried.

"Well, every time anyone so much as raised an eyebrow the other night at dinner, it was as if he knew exactly _why_ they had done so..."

Fury rubbed his temples as Romanoff continued her story; he had lost her voice to his latest migraine at the word "dinner".

"_Dismissed_," he cut in before she tried to start telling him about how great the dessert was or something, "You are hereby removed from this case, Romanoff, and I don't want to even _see_ you for the next week, understood?"

"Yes, sir," she intoned respectfully, but moved towards his desk; "This is from Harry, sir," she said, and left.

He stared at the note she had left behind for a full half a minute before picking it up to read.

He hated people who wrote letters instead of emails, he really did.

_Hello Fury,_

_Long time no see!_

_I hope you don't mind, but I've stolen yet another one of your agents away from you. I believe my tally is near to reaching the fifties; maybe you should stop sending them after me, it doesn't seem to be working out for you._

_If you'd like, I'd be willing to meet with you and discuss our situation over supper; I know a nice teahouse downtown that would probably suit our needs. Feel free to bring a couple of agents along, I'd be happy to up my tally again._

_Do tell Natasha your answer, I'll leave the time and date to you._

_Much affection,_

_Lord Harry Potter_

_P.S. Try to bring someone I've met before, really, otherwise it will end up being I that has the entourage instead of you._

Really, _really_ hated them.

* * *

**Extra #3: Don't Fear The Hulk (Fear The Bruce)**

"It's all about money," Bruce disagreed vehemently, waving his half-filled glass in the air.

"No, no and _no_," Harry insisted, "If it was about the money, why would she be saying that it's _not_ about the money?"

"_Because it's about the money_! She wants money, so she sings about it not being about the money, and people agree and _pay_ to hear her sing!"

"Bloody hell," Harry laughed, topping up the man's still-not-empty glass, "You are looking into this waaaay too much!"

"I admit, my views can be a bit bent on occasion," Bruce admitted, taking a large sip.

"I'll say," Clint snickered from where he was sniping Thor down in-game.

"But I _have_ lived a different life to most people," Bruce said, ignoring the sharp-shooter, "So I have a right to a different opinion."

"Here, here," Harry agreed with a laugh, "You are still _far_ too insightful."

"I'm a deep thinker," he replied with a shrug.

"Reeeeeaally deep," Clint interrupted, making a crude gesture with his hand and his mouth.

Bruce punched him through the wall.

* * *

**AN:** Oh look, a nargle.

**Also:** Still not slash, even though I realise that last bit looked a little suspicious. XD


	8. Extra: Aunty P

_"American-style iced tea is the perfect drink for a hot, sunny day. It's never really caught on in the UK, probably because the last time we had a hot, sunny day was back in 1957."_

**~ Tom Holt**

* * *

**Extra #4: Aunty P**

"Come on, kiddo," Harry called, smiling as his son's eyes darted around the airport in absolute wonder. No matter how many times he came here, there was always something new to his young eyes.

At eight years old, Teddy was forever asking questions, something which Harry encouraged. It was a product of his own knowledge-deprived childhood that made Harry as open as he was; he'd sworn to himself that he'd never tell his children "don't ask questions". He hadn't expected to have kids at such a young age, but that promise still stood.

"Dad, dad, what's that?" he asked, pointing at one lady's phone as she placed it to her ear. He recognised her from the flight over; first class was always a rather small community, even if they didn't speak to each other.

"That's a mobile phone, Ted," he told him, "I'm surprised you haven't seen one at school."

"Yeah, but that one's really skinny; like cardboard!"

Harry looked at the brand on the back of it; it said "Stark", on the side, and he nodded.

"That's because it's made by a very smart man who knows how to make them very skinny."

Teddy looked absolutely fascinated; "You can do that?"

The red-head looked over, finished with her call, and smiled at him; she'd obviously heard their conversation. He smiled back, thinking that her hair reminded him rather too much of Ginny, and took his son's hand.

"Come on, kiddo; let's go visit your grandmother."

"Na-nah! Na-nah!" he chanted in reply, and the smiling woman walked over, trailed by a couple of aides in suits.

"Visiting family?" she asked, and Teddy nodded enthusiastically from his side.

"Yeah! Dad's taking me to see my nan, aren't you?"

"That I am," he agreed warmly, before turning to the woman, "I take it you're here for business?"

"That I am; Virginia Potts, employee of Stark Industries and Tony Stark's personal assistant."

Harry blinked; "Harry Potter, pleasure to meet you. Personal assistant to Tony Stark, huh? How on Earth did you get _that_ job?" he asked, gesturing for them to start walking.

Her aides picked up their combined luggage, and looked around for his. He shook his head; "We don't take anything when we come here; everything we need is in my manor up north."

Virginia's smile faltered for a moment and Harry knew exactly what she was thinking; 'Oh my god, he's a rich guy. Crap.'

"So, how did you get that job with Mister Stark?" he prompted as they finally started moving.

"Oh, I caught his eye," she said grimly, and Harry grinned, "And then it turned out that I was competent, so he kept me around."

"Competency is the heart of any position," he agreed sagely, cheeky grin still in place.

"Yeah, that's what my soccer coach said about me!" Teddy piped up, and Harry snorted.

"Football, Teddy," he informed him, not commenting on just how abysmal Teddy was at the sport.

"Coach Markson said it's called soccer 'cause it's in America, though."

"But we're in England now," Harry told him, and Teddy stuck his tongue out.

Virginia chuckled.

"And what do you do for a living, Mister Potter?" she asked.

"I run a pub in New York," he informed her proudly, drawing a surprised look from the businesswoman, "You thought I was some rich snob, huh? I admit, I have more money than I've ever known what to do with, but I don't really use it."

She blushed, "I'm sorry. I guess I'm just so used to Mister Stark that-"

"It's fine," he assured her, "I knew a few snobs growing up, myself. Hated the lot of them. I was actually raised in the suburbs in Surrey."

They swapped stories until they managed to reach the outside and Teddy broke free.

"Nana!" he called, running up to a woman with flyaway grey hair and a smile that lit up her entire face.

"Teddy! How is my Ursa Minor? Did you have a good flight? Were the flight attendants nice to you? Did you take a nice long nap?" she asked, rapid fire, and Harry smiled at the show. Beside him, Virginia's smile echoed his own.

"And you, Harry? How was your flight?" she asked after Teddy had answered, "And who is _this_ beautiful young lady?" she said, giving Virginia an approving once over.

Virginia blushed, and Harry chuckled.

"Someone we met in the airport, Andy. Virginia, this is Andromeda Tonks, Teddy's grandmother. Andy, this is Virginia Potts; she works for Stark Industries," he introduced them, and Virginia stuck out her hand.

"Please, call me Pepper," she said as they shook, and Andromeda grinned.

"Then you can call me Andy."

"I get the feeling that I should be afraid of what I've started here," Harry whispered to Teddy, who giggled.

"It's funny how scared you are of girls, dad."

* * *

Three days later and Harry was in the business district of London, checking on the various businesses he owned or had invested in, when he bumped into Miss Potts again.

"Mister Potter!" she called from behind him, and he turned and smiled on seeing her.

"Miss Potts," he greeted, waiting for her and the aide she had trailing her to make it to him, "How are you finding London?"

"As wonderful as ever, Mister Potter," she said, and Harry snorted.

"It's been raining all week and today is the first day without clouds for the last month," he informed her, and she laughed, "Half the reason I left was because I couldn't handle the damnable weather."

"Well, seeing as it's such a _nice_ day, would you be up for lunch? I have reservations at a nice cafe, I'm sure they wouldn't mind if I brought a plus one."

"I'm happy to find Jones and have lunch with him," the aide piped up, and Pepper looked up in consternation.

"Are you sure?" she asked, a Harry quietly approved of how she treated her underlings.

"It's fine, ma'am," she replied, and Pepper couldn't of anything but let her go.

"Well," he said, "Lead the way, Miss Potts; it seems the issue with the plus one won't be such an issue after all."

* * *

They discussed stocks over lunch; Harry didn't have many and he didn't like having less than a co-owning share in something he hadn't setup himself but Pepper was adamant that the only way to make it big was to take risks.

"It's all about jumping right in, Harry," she insisted, having heeded his suggestion to call him by his first name, "because if you don't follow your intuition, you'll just wallow in sameness forever, and the business world is nothing if not fluid."

_That_ certainly got him thinking. Stagnation was the problem that the Wizarding World here in England was facing; he did _not_ want to go down that route.

"And what would you suggest I invest in, Pepper? My mind is better suited to creating new drinks than buying stock, and I don't want to hire someone to do it for me."

"Buy from a few well-established companies with consistent numbers. Then, once you feel more confident in your intuition, start to invest in up and comings or relatively small-name brands that look promising. It's like a game, Harry, you just need to know how to play the market."

"I suppose that one of those well-established ones you mentioned would be Stark Industries?" he asked, grinning widely.

She smiled, "Yes, Stark Industries _is_ a well-established company. We've been around since before the Second World War, after all, and the only time we've seen negative numbers was when Stark Senior passed away. That drop lasted less than a week," she said. Harry was impressed again, this time by the pride she had in her company.

"And how does one go about buying stocks in Stark Industries, Miss Potts?"

"If you give me your email I can have the forms in your inbox by this evening."

* * *

Three years later, in New York, Harry watched Tony Stark announce that he was no longer making weapons and grinned. He'd best call Pepper and rub the inevitable stock fall in her face; so much for consistent numbers.

* * *

A few days later, after the revelation of Iron Man's identity, Pepper called him.

"What was that complaint you had about consistent number, Harry?" she asked cheekily, "Because the numbers on Stark Industries stocks just hit an all time high."

Harry snorted; "Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Stark for the win, and all that. We still going for lunch this weekend?"

"Unless Tony- that is, Mister Stark decides that he needs me along on another one of his crime-fighting adventures, then yes. Jean George's at one o'clock, sharp. Don't be late!"

"Of course not," he acquiesced, smiling at the frazzled image of his friend fending off reporters on the screen, "That's an absolutely beautiful shot of you, Pepper; you should go on television more often."

"Be quiet you," she scolded, though her next words held a smile, "See you on Saturday, tell Teddy I said hi."

"Will do; later, Pepper."

"Bye, Harry."

* * *

**AN: **Mostly unedited because I'm bloody tired.

Goodnight, my lovelies (or good morning, since you all live on the other side of the world).


	9. Steve And The Revealing Conversations

_"Get up and dance, get up and smile, get up and drink to the days that are gone in the shortest while."_

**~ _One For The Road_, Ocean Colour Scene**

* * *

**Steve and the Revealing Conversations**

It wasn't until Fury had waited half an hour that he realised that Potter intended to meet him at ten o'clock exactly. Fury was of the opinion that being early was better than being late, but apparently Potter was not of the same mind.

That half an hour could have been one of the most uncomfortable in his life, if he hadn't ceased caring about what people thought of him somewhere in the eighties. He and his right hand agent were definitely out of place here – the leather coat and SHIELD uniform respectively had been replaced by business suits, but the fact remained that he had an _eye patch_. Even in New York, that was pushing fashion a bit too far.

At one minute past ten, Potter walked into the teahouse like he owned it – which he did, not that it gave him an excuse to saunter over like he was the most powerful man in the world.

"Mister Potter," Fury said cordially as the man sat opposite him.

"Director Fury, Agent Hill," he replied, and Fury suddenly remembered that Maria had met Potter while she was still a permanent field agent. His head started to throb.

"Was there a particular reason for your wanting this meeting, Mister Potter?" he asked, hiding his growing headache, "I was under the impression that you were adamantly refusing to sign on to the Avengers."

"Oh, I'm not signing up for anything, Fury," Harry informed him as a tea tray was set before him; obviously the man was a regular, "Thank you. No, I just thought I'd rub in how many of your agents over the years have become Potter Converts."

"Potter Converts?" asked Maria, straight-faced. Fury sincerely hoped she never changed.

"Yup. I have a list in a book somewhere that details who I have lunch with for weeks in advance; some are friends and acquaintances, a couple are business associates and quite a few are Steve or Tony. But more than a quarter are SHIELD agents, both current and former."

Fury turned to Maria, "Please tell me that your name is not in that book," he said, as close to pleading as he was ever likely to come.

"It isn't, sir. The only time I have had contact with Mister Potter was during the time that you assigned me to track him."

"Thank all that is holy," he muttered, and Potter laughed at him.

"Now that we have that out of the way, let's try to enjoy this. Tea is a thing for relaxing and quiet discussion; coffee is the drink for councils of war."

Fury acknowledged the strange wisdom in this statement by twisting his mouth before pouring himself a cup and taking a sip while Maria poured her own.

"What is this?" he asked with a raised brow, staring at the cup, "It is _not_ the Earl Grey that I was expecting from an English Lord."

Potter snorted; "It's chocolate-chip chai, actually. It sounds strange, but I've become rather fond of it. My son introduced me to it, actually."

"Your son is almost as impossible to track as you are, did you know that?"

"That's half because I made it that way and half because I raised him that way; no matter where we live or for how long, we will always be a family on the run."

"I suppose that there isn't any chance of you telling SHIELD where you are currently based?"

"None whatsoever; if you need me, Steve has my mobile number."

"For someone who has no intention of joining the Avengers, you certainly seem to spend a lot of time with its members," Fury observed shrewdly.

"I _like_ them, Fury; they're _interesting_," Potter informed him with a smirk, "You have a tendency to attract interesting people to work for you, and I love anything out of the ordinary."

"I got that impression, especially when you managed to turn the entire unit almost completely against me after one night. Are you sure you aren't using some sort of obscure wizard mind control that none of my magical agents know about to influence them?"

Potter had the audacity to laugh at him; "If I was, I haven't noticed. I'm just good with people, Fury; it's something I picked up when I was trying to make people like me during my war."

"Your war?" Fury asked sceptically.

Potter shrugged, "My predecessors' war then. There was a war and I was a figurehead in it, so I made the people love me and it became _my_ war. That's how it used to work before and that's how it'll probably work again."

"Romanoff called you a "wild card"."

"I think of myself more like a bludger; hit fast and hard then fly away before retaliation can be organised."

They bantered back and forth, discussing politics, war and other topics that really belonged somewhere other than a teahouse. Hill sat quietly, sipping her tea and absorbing everything that was said for both future reference and material to put into her report.

At some point they got back onto the topic of future cooperation, and Potter agreed to occasionally lend a hand (only if requested) as long as Natasha got the job as his handler.

"Agent Romanoff requires her _own_ handler," Fury argued, "What makes you think I'd let her _be_ one?"

"Because I asked nicely?" Harry asked innocently, and Fury tried to resist the urge to reach for his pistol and shoot the bastard; even if he managed to hit him he wouldn't stay dead long, which made the action lose its appeal.

They circulated through topics again, dancing around issues of any real importance. Potter asked if Steve could have his rank back now that he was a tentative ally of SHIELD and Fury acquiesced, knowing that sometimes discretion was the better part of valour.

Fury eventually caused the meeting to end, completely by accident; he'd asked Potter if he would look into a new hero that had appeared, going by the name Spiderman.

"Get the hell out of my teahouse, Fury, I'm not your damn golden retriever," was the response, and Fury took the hint.

He realised with some chagrin that he had actually been enjoying his time with Potter towards the end of their meeting and clenched his teeth. The man's blood must have been made of heroin or something; he lured people in with the promise of interesting conversation and they often, unfortunately for Fury, couldn't resist coming back for another hit.

Thankfully neither Fury nor his right hand were so weak-willed.

He turned to Maria after they had boarded the quinjet and said, "If I ever, _ever_, make a decision based on the fact that the other option available would have hurt Potter in some fashion, please shoot me."

"Understood, sir," she replied, starting up the jet.

"And never, _ever_, change, Hill."

She smiled, "Yes, sir."

* * *

It was several days before Steve managed to see Harry again.

First there was an attack on Boston by a group of Ani-Men, whose purpose they had yet to decipher.

Then there was something of a moral crisis as Thor informed them that Loki was not, as they had expected, in prison but under house arrest. _That_ had set Clint on the warpath, and he'd been sulking ever since Thor had informed him that mortals were not allowed on Asgard and that even if they were, Clint was not of nobility and would hold little sway in court.

Soon after, the entire Avengers team had been subjected to briefing after briefing, mostly on the subject of new team members – though during on Fury announced that his rank had been returned to him, much to his surprise. Fury had apparently given up on Harry and set his sights on someone more fresh and manageable; one Spiderman, whose secret identity he had apparently deciphered (not that the bastard told them). Tony had argued that the kid was just that – a kid – and that their team had no place for toddlers. Fury replied by asking what _his_ superpower was and that particular meeting was cut short when Tony left in a huff.

When Steve _did_ manage to get enough time to go see Harry, he found the bar locked, meaning that neither one of its residents were inside. Steve returned to the tower somewhat put out, until Tony mentioned that Pepper had gone out to lunch with a friend and he had to grin.

Finally, after nearly two weeks, the villains and bureaucrats started to go back into hibernation and Steve finally managed to catch Harry at home.

"Hello?" he called as he walked in, noting that the barroom was empty.

"Steve!" Harry called, and Steve smiled as he heard footsteps run down the stairs. Harry's head popped over the banister, "Hey, mate, I was just about to have some morning tea. You wanna come up?"

Steve nodded and followed Harry to the kitchen, where the sound of weekend television was instantly drowned out by Harry crying, "_Why do you refuse to toast my toast_!?" and shaking a fist at the uncaring machine.

He snorted and took the poor appliance out of Harry's reach, "Weren't you the one that said magic interfered with electronics? Shouldn't you be expecting this kind of thing?"

"It's a gods-damned toaster, Steve; I meant things like computers and my forever-dying mobile phones. Besides, the toaster didn't short out; it just has too many settings that I don't know how to use. I'm waiting for one to come out with a screen or something!"

Steve noted that, indeed, the toaster had about five knobs and half a dozen buttons. He put it back on the bench and looked at it critically; "I will never understand modern people's obsession with options. Here, we can use the grill in your oven instead."

"I'd call that another option."

"Just hand me the bread, would you?"

Eventually they managed to toast the toast and brew some tea and coffee – because Steve did not like tea – and they sat themselves on the couch with relief.

Steve's was short-lived, though, when Harry switched off the TV and stared at him.

"... What?" he asked uneasily, a piece of toast halfway to his mouth.

"I told you not to come back until you could explain yourself," Harry told him, "You have come back. Now explain or leave."

Steve groaned; his reasons for being angry had revealed themselves to be rather embarrassing on reflection, not that it changed the way he felt, and he _really_ didn't want to explain them to Harry.

"How about, you tell me about your childhood first and then I'll tell you why I was upset."

"Jealous."

"I was _not_-"

"_Fine_, fine," Harry sighed, "Okay, well, you already know that I was raised by my aunt and uncle," Harry started.

"Yeah."

"Well, I wasn't so much raising as shoving me in a cupboard in an attempt to forget about me."

Steve placed his toast back on his plate and put it on the table, "A _cupboard_?"

Harry shrugged; "Under the stairs in the downstairs hallway. It was my bedroom for ten years."

"Is that why you're so short? Because they kept you locked up like an animal and it stunted your growth?" Steve asked, anger starting to break through the shock.

"No, that had more to do with the fact that they didn't feed me much or often. By the time I realised that I could've been taller it was already too late to fix the damage and I was doomed to short-arse-ness forevermore."

Steve's hands were clenched so tight that he was certain he was bleeding from where his nails dug into his skin. "How _could_ they- I- holy _fuck_."

Harry blinked, "Did you just _swear_?"

"Of course I swore! They mistreated you so much that you- oh gods, they beat you, didn't they!?" he exclaimed. Harry was very aware that what Steve was referring to was not deserved punishment, but abuse. He didn't comment on his swearing to multiple gods in favour of smiling weakly.

"Sometimes. They thought they could beat the magic out of me. I didn't actually know about my heritage until I was eleven, though, so until then I didn't really understand why most of the time."

He suddenly found himself pressed against Steve's chest, his face honestly feeling like it had just met a brick wall, and he tried desperately not to spill his tea all over their laps. With one hand, he reached up to pat the soldier's shoulders from behind.

"It's okay, Steve," he assured him, "What's done is done. They're the worst sort of people, but I haven't seen any of them since I turned seventeen and I probably won't until I go and seek out my cousin's children."

"And _why_ are you going to do that?"

"Because eventually, whether it's his children or his grandchildren or even further down the line, they're going to start being born magical. It's already in their blood, and when it happens I'm going to go find my uncle, or his grave if need be, and laugh at him," Steve stiffened slightly at the venom in Harry's voice, but didn't move away, "You can't stop nature, Steve. The human race will always be evolving, and whether that means more mutants or more magic or more super-people, that change isn't going to stop because ignorant people try and beat the weird out of small children."

He pulled away and grinned.

"Besides, once I got out into the magical world they stopped being so bad; the knowledge that I could turn them into a toad or possibly flay them kind of mellowed them out somewhat."

"And what part of your upbringing, exactly, made it so that you knew how to bow to Thor. He's _still_ raving about that, by the way."

"Oh, that's part of my lordship. My title is pureblood inherited, and I just threw him a proper "you are my better" pureblood bow and hoped it would work. Apparently it did," He smiled widely, "And now it's your turn. Why the sourpuss routine?"

"What? _No_! That is not how this works!" Steve protested, still angry, "You barely told me anything! And I know there's more to your family than you told me, otherwise-"

"There's _nothing to tell_, Steve," Harry told him firmly, "It's over and done with, and eventually I know I'll have my sufficiently passive-aggressive revenge and that's enough for me."

Steve opened his mouth to argue again, but a gesture from Harry and he found that no sound was passing through his lips.

"You know I hate using magic on you like this, Steve," Harry told him, as if he were a child, "but you are either going to tell me or I am going to levitate your arse out the door and leave that silencing charm on you for good measure."

Steve shook his head vigorously, eyes pleading, and Harry lifted the spell.

"Good. Talk."

"My reasons are shit."

"My reasons for most of my decisions in life have been shit. _Tell me_."

Steve groaned; "Okay, I was jealous. I was jealous because you are all I have and everyone else wants to share you and I want to throw them all out of the tower every time I think about it."

"Go on."

"Asides from Thor, this was the world they grew up in. It has everything familiar and everything they care about. My world disappeared after the War ended and so did everything I loved or cared about. I don't _want_ them to know you because you're _my_ friend."

Steve shut up then, and they sat in silence for a moment. Then Harry put down his tea and moved forward to give him a hug of his own.

"You are a big fucking sap, aren't you," he laughed, pulling back, "You don't have to worry about having to share me, Steve; I am your friend first and foremost, and no matter how much alcohol Tony plies me with or how many things I could learn from Thor, _you_ are the one who is my friend."

Steve tried not to bite his lip as his embarrassment increased; he was just being stupid, he knew, but he still couldn't help feeling like he should never have let his team know that he had a friend. Even if it was just so that he could have Harry to himself.

"Mate," Harry said, bringing Steve out of his thoughts, "as long as you don't act rabid around my own friends, I don't care. They're your team, you can tell them to bugger off if you want to."

"... I'm an idiot, aren't I?"

"Oh yes; you remind me of me after my Ron and Hermione got engaged - I was convinced they were going to leave me alone. They didn't, of course; they still call me every other day and their eldest sends me letters from Hogwarts. It's cute, actually."

"I should go apologise to my team, too; I've been acting weird."

"Nah, let them stew for a while longer. They probably think they've done something wrong and are running around wondering how to fix it."

"You're a bad influence on me."

Harry gave him a questioning look.

"You're making me enjoy the thought of prolonging my teammates' suffering."

Harry laughed and threw a piece of toast which Steve deftly snatched out of the air. "Eat your food. I have drinks I've been experimenting with, so you get the honour of taste-tester."

"Joy. I'm not going to explode, am I?"

"I certainly hope not."

* * *

**Extra #5: Prelude to Fear The Bruce**

It was after a rather boring mission debriefing, and the Avengers were on the helicarrier, in the cafeteria, trying to decide what to have for lunch. Asides from the fruit, there really wasn't much that was all that appetising, so they moved over to that section. In it, they found a sadly tiny number of strawberries and half a crop's worth of bananas.

"Everyone runs for the strawberries because there's only a few of them," Natasha told them, stabbing a couple for herself.

"I'll happily take a banana," Bruce put in, and every Avenger present turned to look at him. "... What?"

"Bruce, is there something you're not telling us?" Tony asked slyly.

"What? I like bananas!" he said defensively, and Clint snorted from where he stood behind them.

"And we're happy for you, really," he said, pushing in front and grabbing a strawberry, "but the rest of us don't really want to know your preferences. Not that it matters to me what you do in bed with guys," the last part was sung, and Tony snickered at the Avenue Q reference.

Bruce, on the other hand, flushed mightily. "That is _not_ what I meant by that!" he said loudly, and everyone in the cafeteria was suddenly on edge.

"We know, Bruce," Tony assured him, patting him on the shoulder, "You know how we are."

Bruce sighed; "You people are not good for my blood pressure."

"Neither is coffee, but I don't see that stopping you from drinking it."

The SHIELD employees, some of whom had even reached for their weapons, slowly calmed down and returned to their meals and conversations.

"One day," Steve said to Thor, "Bruce is going to hit him, _really hard_."

"Indeed, Friend Steve."

* * *

**AN:** Shorter than last chapter, but we can now move past Steve's jealousy (which was not part of my original story-plan, gods damn it) and have some _fun_ again!

P.S. Fury, you know not with whom you fuck.

**Something small: **I went back and changed Natasha's name from Romanov to Romanoff, because it was subconciously bugging me and I needed to fix it. "Romanova" sounds weird in my head, so Romanoff it is!

* * *

**To my reviewers:** Thank you all, my loverlies, you leave my heart aflutter.

**~ Runaway**


	10. Steve And The Worst Best Friend

_"Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."_

**~ Homer Simpson**

* * *

**Steve and the Worst Best Friend Ever**

If anyone asked Steve, he would tell them that every person he knew was out to get him. It wasn't a collaboration - or at least he didn't think it was - but everyone was desperately trying to get him out into the modern world. The one with the highest success rate was Harry, mostly because Steve had initially thought that _he_ needed to get out more and had obligingly traipsed around New York with him, looking for interesting things to do. On finding out that he'd assumed wrong, they'd continued with their outings; it had become tradition and - dare Steve say it - _routine_ to go out somewhere weird with Harry and let him show Steve what had changed in his city since he'd been asleep.

In line with this, Harry had been slowly introducing Steve to new and interesting foods as part of his very own "get the man into the modern world" scheme. So far, it had been working. He avoided things that were too out there - like bugs or eyes or certain... _interesting_ parts of anatomy - and in that way managed to make Steve eat an every growing selection of weird things at ever weirder places. Because honestly, no one could survive on hot dogs and cheeseburgers forever.

For right now, though, they were trying something at Steve's request - something sort of normal, which sort of disappointed Harry. They sat in a restaurant where the meat was delivered on a hot rock - a really hot rock - and which you then cooked yourself. It was an interesting concept, but it was all steak to Harry, in the end.

"I like the idea," Steve informed him, smiling as the rock and slab of cow were placed before him, "I'm not picky, but being able to cook stuff myself makes me feel better about eating in restaurants."

"So paranoid," Harry muttered, picking up his fork and absolutely massive steak knife, "Bon appetite, and all that," he said, before starting to cut his own meat into smaller pieces for easier cooking.

They chattered idly; occasionally someone would come up and ask Steve for an autograph, but for the most part their dinner passed with the calm that tended to settle over them when they were doing almost anything.

Then; "OW! Gods damn it!"

Harry's head shot up, concerned; "You alright, Steve?"

"Yeah; burned myself on the rock when I wasn't paying attention. It'll heal soon enough."

"And that was reason enough to swear to the gods?" Harry laughed, and Steve looked offended.

"There's only one god, the rest are just the things you use to sell drinks," he said, somewhat haughtily, and Harry snorted.

"It certainly sounded like there were more of them just then, what with the way you were vehemently swearing to a few."

"It's obviously something I picked up from you."

"You really shouldn't swear or pray to multiples if you don't really mean it, Steve," Harry warned him, completely serious beneath the humour, "Sometimes they answer, and it's often unpleasant when they realise you were just kidding."

"There's only one god," Steve repeated with a frown.

"There's only one patron god of _this_ planet, maybe," Harry conceded, "But he's not the only one in the universe. And the other ones might not be so friendly. Case and point; Loki."

Steve sat and thought about this, his meat burning on the hot rock, until Harry snickered at something he'd thought of.

"What's so funny?"

Harry pulled out his phone in response and started tapping; "I just remembered this thing I saw on the net, and it made me laugh."

Shortly after, a slightly off-colour screen was shoved in his face and Steve was somewhat surprised to see Tony, himself and the Hulk, all with different captions regarding their religious status.

"Met two gods, still an atheist," Steve read aloud, "Met two gods, still a Christian. Met two gods-" Steve snorted, "- beat the shit out of both of them. Wait, how do they know that?"

"Are you kidding? The only people on the planet with such a good photo of the Hulk have to be Tony and SHIELD, so it's either Tony being a shmuck or one of their agents slacking off during work."

Steve suddenly remembered the man who had been playing the game called "Galaga" before the Battle and narrowed his eyes. He was going to have to talk to Fury about that.

"Anyway, hurry up and finish; I have a meeting tomorrow and I want to go have a nice long old man sleep beforehand."

Steve raised an eyebrow, "I thought you said, and I quote, "I don't do meetings"."

"Which is code for I'm going to lunch with Aunty P," Harry grinned in response, eyes flickering over to a nearby booth. Inside said booth, five Avengers were crammed, trying to look inconspicuous.

Steve narrowed his eyes; never mind Fury, he was going to have to have a chat with his _team_.

"Well, then, we'd best get you home for your old man nap," he bit out.

"Now kiss him!" Clint suddenly yelled, making the rest of the restaurant hush, before his mouth found itself full of Natasha's elbow.

Steve flushed with both embarrassment and anger, and Harry rolled his eyes; "Despite whatever strange fantasies you have running around your sick mind, Clint, neither Steve or I are gay."

"So, team," Steve said brightly, standing, and all eyes in the restaurant snapped to him, "I think it's about time we inspected Clint's room. Oh, and the ventilation system too. What do you say?"

"No!" Clint cried, horrified, "No, please! Noooo!" Unfortunately for him, his teammates had all decided that his wrath was far less unpleasant than Steve's and stood up. Thor grabbed Clint, who was attempting to climb over the table and make a bid for the door, and they marched out of the door like Steve had given them express orders to do so. The rest of the patrons could only watch as the Avengers acted like (somewhat) normal people, as opposed of the pillars of integrity and goodness that they were supposed to be.

"Well, this was a fun evening," Harry said to no one in particular as he followed Steve to the door.

Steve smiled, "Goodnight, Harry."

"Oh, I think yours will be better," he replied, watching Thor attempt to keep Clint from wriggling out of his hold.

Steve's smile turned somewhat wicked, "Yes, it probably will."

* * *

"Okay, so today we're going to try getting you caught up on some more modern culture," Tony informed Steve, flanked on either side by Clint and Bruce, who were smirking and smiling, respectively. Steve knew that Clint was in this for revenge, and resolved to have his "nest" cleared monthly in retaliation.

"Do we have to?" he asked from where he sat at the dining table, despite being already resigned, "I was hoping to just sit here and fill out paperwork."

"Nope, we're going out," Tony told him, making a shooing motion, "Go get a jacket, it's getting colder outside this time of year."

Steve sighed, "Alright. Do I get to know where we're going?"

"Nope," Clint grinned evilly, "All you need to know is that it will be good for your re-education."

Steve did not like what he saw in those eyes, and the fact that Bruce's face was slightly mirroring that mischief only made his guard come up more.

He made his way to his room with deliberate slowness, trying to take as long as possible without arousing suspicion and texting Harry as he went.

* * *

Across town, Harry and Pepper were meeting up for lunch, as was their custom, when he got a string of texts one after the other.

"'Scuse me, Pepper, I should probably look at this," he apologised, pulling out a phone that was on its last legs - it was about time he got a new one.

"No problem," she waved it off, and he looked at the messages.

"I think Tony's about to try some sort of new torture technique on Steve," he informed her, garnering an amused smile, "Listen to this: "SOS, stop. Tony, Clint and Bruce on the warpath, stop. Requesting immediate aid, stop.""

"Does he really write "stop"?" Pepper asked, laughter in her eyes.

"He's a bit of a smart-arse," Harry admitted with a shrug and Pepper's smile widened.

"He's so different with you than he is with Tony; all I ever hear from him is how up-tight and boring he is."

Harry grinned; "And here's the next few: "Objective of assault is to ingratiate the modern world to me, stop. Would appreciate backup, if available, stop.""

"How much credit is he wasting?" Pepper wondered idly.

"The man has seventy years of savings piled up in the bank, he'll be fine," Harry assured her, reading the last two texts so far, ""Will inform of location on arrival, stop. FOR GOD'S SAKE, HARRY HELP ME, stop." Huh, he used caps lock."

"Are you going to go help him?"

Harry snorted, "No, let him stew for a while. I'll go save him if they decide to take him to a strip club or something; that would probably break his poor old-fashioned brain. You going to finish that salad? I'm still kind of hungry."

* * *

Back with the superheroes, Steve was still hoping that this outing wouldn't turn out too badly. Unfortunately he was travelling with the wrong crowd if that was what he wanted.

"First thing's first," Tony said as they got out of his limo, attracting the attention of everyone within a half a mile radius, "we are going to _make_ you like modern music, whether you want to or not."

"Here's something modern for you," Steve said as he dug his heels in, fighting as all three of his teammates started pulling on his arms, "Do not want!"

"Harry's teaching you well," Tony grunted as he started trying to push him from behind, "but you _are_ going to listen to AC/DC or Black Sabbath-"

"Or Guns N' Roses," Clint added.

"Yeah, or even newer stuff like Breaking Benjamin, which I personally think is all whine but the kids love that shit-"

"Led Zeppelin," Clint said again.

"Weezer."

"Van Halen, Green Day."

"Foo Fighters!"

"Bob Sinclar," Bruce put in, and Tony shot him a look.

"We're trying to make him like rock, not hippy love crap."

"Bob Sinclar is a great artist!" Bruce defended.

By now, people were recording everything that was happening on their various devices, some were probably streaming live to the web and Steve was desperately wishing that Tony hadn't brought the limo.

"Yeah, for you. You need the relaxation; Steve needs to get more riled up about stuff. What's better for that than a bunch of people screaming their heads off at each other on stage?"

Steve sighed and twisted his hands to grab both Bruce and Clint by the arms; "Can we just go inside now, _please_?"

Tony glanced around and laughed, "Okay, we can argue about this later. Into the store!"

* * *

Harry and Pepper were now walking through Central Park discussing the possibilities of setting up a fundraising event for the Avengers.

"I know that Tony has more money than god, but he doesn't want to spend it all on the Avengers; it's not something that brings in its own profit, so he can't pour money into it like he could with the suit or his other gadgets," she informed him passionately. Harry wondered how the hell the suit was earning him money, but smiled anyway.

"I understand; it's why I don't invest in anything I don't feel I can trust, as you well know," he told her, "I'd be happy to supply drinks, by the way. I'm thinking about releasing a line of pre-mixed drinks, so it'll be a good way to see if there's a market for them."

"That would be wonderful," she smiled, "You'll probably be invited, though, so you can't be the one serving them."

"Eh, it's not too hard to tell someone how much of something to pour into a glass."

A few people walking by were laughing and pointing at something on someone's camera, and Harry caught the words, "never seen the Cap so scared before". He turned to Pepper, who had obviously heard the same, before glancing ahead. All the people laughing and pointing at what had to be pictures were coming from that direction. Harry and Pepper simultaneously turned to walk away from wherever the Avengers were torturing their leader.

* * *

"Okay, next," Tony said, waving an arm in the air as if revealing something amazing - Steve thought that he'd never seen so much of Howard in the man until that moment, "we are going to get your arse in something that doesn't look like you're planning to work out in it. Every day. All the time."

"What? Why?" Steve asked, affronted, "I _like_ being comfortable!"

"Yeah, but even after living in enforced poverty for the better part of six years, Bruce _still_ had better clothes than you do, and _you_ have a bank account the size of New Jersey."

Steve snorted; "If mine is the size of New Jersey, what does your look like?"

"Probably about the size of Eurasia, with most of Africa and a bit of Newfoundland thrown in. We're getting off topic; you need new clothes and we are going to have them tailored so that the women of the world can swoon over you no matter _what_ you happen to be doing at the time, be it running, eating or saving the world in spandex."

"Who's to say I won't just keep wearing my old clothes anyway?"

"Every piece of cloth in your room that doesn't have some sort of sentimental value is going to be burned."

Steve opened his mouth to protest, but Clint whispered in his ear, "He said in your room. Leave some of it in a safe deposit box somewhere if you're that attached to it."

Steve wondered if _that_ was why Clint's room had been relatively clean the night before - he was storing everything in a bank somewhere. He placed the thought aside for later use and nodded his resignation. "Fine, let's go then."

* * *

Harry laughed when he opened the internet on his home laptop and saw that "Captain America" was trending on Twitter.

"Captain America," read one post, "now in three flavours; hot, hotter and on fire!" Attached was a link to a photo of Steve, surrounded by his three captors, wearing what looked like an Armani suit.

"Oh you poor man," Harry laughed at his friend's predicament.

Then he saved the photo and emailed it to Teddy.

* * *

From the back of the classroom came an inordinately loud snort and the teacher sent the boy who had made the noise - Potter, his name was - a disapproving frown.

When they left for lunch, Alex turned to his best friend and asked, "What the hell were you looking at to make you laugh like that?"

"Oh my god," Teddy laughed, pulling out his phone, "My dad sent me this photo of St- Captain America. Apparently the rest of the Avengers are making him go shopping. Look! Look at how horrified he is by his own reflection!"

Alex couldn't help but laugh - the icon of America looked like he was about ready to bolt.

"Where did your dad get this photo?"

"Twitter, apparently. And now _I_ am going to put it on Tumblr."

"Send it to me, too?"

* * *

By the end of the day, once Steve's old clothes had been farewelled in a bonfire on top of the tower and the fire marshal had been bribed into ignoring it, the first Avenger was completely exhausted.

He sat heavily on the edge of his bed and wondered who he'd angered to deserve such punishment. Maybe Harry had been right when he'd said that swearing to gods without meaning it pissed them off.

"Sorry!" he whispered to the ceiling. On receiving no reply, he flopped back onto the bed and sighed.

"Why so glum?" someone asked from the door, and Steve raised his head to look at Harry.

"What are you doing here?" Steve asked, confused, before sitting up; "Shouldn't you be running the bar?"

"Meh. I wanted to ask how you were surviving. Twitter tells me that you had a rough day."

"Twitter... is the one with the short and mostly stupid posts, right?"

Harry grinned, "Photos too," he said, pulling his phone out, "You and your arse were trending all day."

"Wait, _what_?"

"Yup, have a look."

Steve scrolled through the posts, getting paler with each one (especially the ones where Clint had demanded that he try on tight-fitting clothes for "gym work"). Comments about how good he looked abounded, and he was somewhat stunned by how _forward_ some people were.

"You obviously had quite the day, Steve," Harry told him eventually, taking the phone away from him.

"You seriously just came up here to see me?" Steve asked, a little sceptically.

"Of course not; I promised Thor a rematch at Mario Kart. Apparently he's been _practicing_," he replied with a smug grin, "Not that it'll help. He sucks."

"In that case-"

Harry gave him the look that only a father could manage - one that said "I will lock you in your room for a week if you don't cooperate".

"- I'll stay here and take an old man nap," he finished weakly.

"Good. I expect to see you tomorrow, so don't wear yourself out on my behalf now. I like you better when you're a functional human being and not a robot."

"Yes sir," Steve mock saluted, and Harry rolled his eyes.

"Night then, _Captain_."

Steve grunted and flopped back on the bed, and Harry laughed.

"You are the worst best friend ever!" Steve called as he started to close the door, and Harry smiled at the warm feeling he got from being called "best friend".

"Right then," he said as he walked into the room that held Thor, Tony and Natasha and pulled a bottle out of his pocket, "We are drinking and toasting to Marduk and playing Mario Kart. Any questions?"

"Who's Marduk?"

"Tony, have you ever heard of Google?"

"Why don't you love meeee?" he whined, and Harry snorted.

"Marduk is the patron god of Babylon and the god of magic. Magic which I don't have to use to take you lot down."

"Oh, bring it _on_, Wiz-Kid!"

"If you ever call me that again, I will hang you off the "A" of the tower, Tony."

"You really spend too much time around Steve."

* * *

On the other side of the world, in a small country in Europe, a man stared avidly at an array of screens.

On those screens were images of the same man, over and over.

A man in a black hood throwing bolts of what he knew to be magic.

He grinned.

* * *

**Extra: Clint The Deviant**

"You have to wonder about him, though," Tony said as they watched Clint play a sniper simulator from the bar, "The amount of cracks he makes about everyone's preferences kind of hints at denial."

"I agree, actually," Bruce said, nodding, "It's probably just him subconsciously trying to vent his sexual frustration."

"No way," Steve put in, frowning, "I'm pretty sure he's not gay."

"There's only one what to find out," Tony said solemnly, before calling out, "Hey, Clint!"

"Yeah?" the archer answered after executing a particularly gruesome headshot.

"Who was the first guy you slept with?"

"Guy named Mark," he answered easily. Steve sighed in defeat, but Bruce frowned.

"And the first girl?" he asked, drawing surprised looks from his accomplices.

"Marxene."

"Similar names, huh?" Tony said with a borderline lecherous grin.

"Twins," Clint answered, smirking broadly.

Tony wondered how he'd managed to pull _that_ off.

Steve groaned; "He's not gay, he's just a sexual deviant."

"And proud of it," Clint teased as he saved and turned off the console, moving over to where they stood, "Though lately I haven't had much success with _deviating_ other people."

His eyes turned slyly to Bruce, who gaped at him for a moment before going slightly green around the eyes and sprinting for the elevator.

The second the doors closed, Clint burst out laughing; "Did you see his face? He was so white he almost matched the tiles!"

"He's going to either punch you through a wall again or buy you dinner, you realise that, right?" Steve asked mildly, making Clint pale worse than Bruce had.

"What? No!" he ran towards the stairs, since the elevator was already in use, "Bruce! I was kidding! I don't want to date you, please don't buy me dinner!"

"You've become evil," Tony informed Steve once they were alone, and Steve grinned.

"I grew a sense of humour."

"Yeah, an _evil_ one. Shawarma?"

"Sure."

* * *

**AN:** Oh look, something that could potentially be plot-worthy! -gasp-

Wrote this inbetween breaks while doing a biology assignment, so apologies for anything that seems kind of... off...

* * *

Stonegrill is what I based the Nameless Restaurant in scene one on, and it is the most awesome restaurant and I love it.

* * *

Also, someone asked me to make Harry officially straight so:

**HARRY IS OFFICIALLY STRAIGHT IN THIS STORY.**

**JUST FYI.**

Seriously, if Harry's ever going to be gay I will write a separate piece and it will have _my_ HP/Avengers OTP in it. That pairing is, sadly, not Steve/Harry. Sorry loves.

* * *

Thank you all for your continued support!

**~ Runaway**


	11. Steve And The Reluctant Hero

**Steve and the Reluctant Hero**

It was a perfectly normal day for the Avengers and company. Tony and Pepper were snuggling on the couch ("I don't "snuggle"," Tony informed them without inflection, "But Pepper likes to cuddle and I oblige her."), Clint was down on his floor shooting things, Natasha was nowhere to be found, Bruce was in his lab, Thor was eating them out of house and home and Steve was drawing the cityscape.

And then, as suddenly as always, "Avengers Assemble" simultaneously popped up on all of their phones and every screen in the Avengers' living areas for good measure.

"Sorry, Pep," Tony said, kissing her goodbye, and she nodded and picked up her phone to act as their unofficial second handler.

"Suit up, people!" Steve called as he ran to his room to get his own gear, "JARVIS, patch me through to SHIELD."

"Yes, sir," the AI answered calmly, and soon Steve was talking to Fury.

"What's the emergency, Director?" he asked the air as he pulled on his uniform.

"Victor von Doom has decided to use his diplomatic immunity to get into the country again," Fury informed him, sounding angry that such a thing had been allowed to happen (again), "At the moment his alter ego is threatening Manhattan, for reasons unknown to us."

"Why weren't we informed earlier?" Steve asked, "JARVIS, transfer call to my headset."

"Because, Captain Rogers," Fury bit out, now talking in his ear, "he didn't start until moments ago. Nothing's exploded yet, but I'm sure it will, if he's trying to lure you out. Given that he's attacking the city that you're living in, I'm sure that's the case."

"Understood," Steve said, moving to the roof and the quinjet. The rest of his team, bar Iron Man who had already flown off to assess the situation, stood before him, "Dr Doom is attacking Manhattan, just outside of our view from here. We're taking him down and taking him in; any questions."

The silent "no, sir" was obvious, and Steve nodded; "Thor, feel free to fly over and help Iron Man. The rest of us will meet you there shortly. Keep in radio contact; I want to know everything that's happening as it happens."

Thor nodded sharply and swung his hammer until he took off, while the remaining Avengers piled into the quinjet.

* * *

"Ah, the Avengers!" Dr Doom crowed once they all stood before him, six superheroes in all their shiny, spangly glory, "So wonderful to see you again!"

"It would be nicer if you weren't trying to tear down New York, Doom," Steve announced, stepping forward, "What do you want?"

"Nothing in particular, I'm just here to meet someone."

"With my dick," Iron Man murmured over the comm. link, making Steve bite the inside of his cheek, "He's here to meet someone with his metal dick."

"And then, once I have found that someone-"

"With my dick."

"- he and I will engage in glorious battle-"

"With our dicks."

"- and I will defeat him-"

"With my superior dick."

"- and afterwards I will subjugate the rest of this country-"

"With my dick."

"- and then rule over the entire world!"

"With my dick."

By this point, Steve was biting the inside of his cheek so hard that he swore he could taste blood, and he could tell Hawkeye was struggling by the way that he was breathing hard through his nose and softly whimpering.

"Well, Captain America, are you here to stop me from dominating this world?"

"With my dick."

"Iron Man, shut _up_!" Steve finally yelled over his shoulder, and Hawkeye nearly dropped his bow from laughing so hard.

Doom, however, apparently did not appreciate the laughter directed at him; "Perhaps this will teach you to respect your betters!" he declared, throwing bolts of magic into the crowd of people who were trying to get away from what would soon be fighting.

Steve realised that while they were far away, they weren't far enough and jumped in front of one bolt. It ricocheted off his shield, and Iron Man deflected the second, but the third and forth made it past them and into the crowd. Screams abounded, bodies flew through the air, and Steve knew that even if they weren't killed by the blast some people would have died from secondary impacts.

He couldn't turn back to look, though; he had to focus on keeping Doom from killing anymore innocent people, and he swore silently to himself that no one else was going to die today.

* * *

Harry apparated straight to an alleyway near the hospital, quickly moving inside and gently setting his injured son on the floor, trying not to cry.

"I can't fix you," he whispered, hand moving over Teddy's forehead, which was bruised and bleeding and had cracked against the pavement so loudly that Harry had _heard_ it, "I need a doctor, damn it!" he yelled, and the staff who had been on their way sped up at the cry and the amount of blood they saw.

Harry couldn't fix his son, he thought as the muggles shooed him away to give themselves more room, but the gods knew that he could fix the psycho that had hurt him - Harry would rip the metal off his skin, the skin off his flesh and the flesh off his bones. He knew how; he knew the incantations to keep him alive as he tore him apart and fed his entrails to a threstral and made him watch.

But he couldn't just leave Teddy, not when he could potentially _die_. He was being cared for – by muggle doctors, but doctors all the same – but if he died...

Harry was Master of Death, not Life, and he knew that he couldn't bring people back if their bodies couldn't support them – unless his body was healed there was nothing Harry could do but talk to a summoned shade, something he hadn't done with _anyone_ since that night in the Forbidden Forest.

Teddy was loaded onto a stretcher and wheeled off and Harry walked beside him, holding his limp hand in his own and hoping – _praying_ – that Hela wouldn't take his family away from him. Not now, not yet. It was too soon; a parent should never have to see their child pass on, and certainly not so young.

The doctors wouldn't let him into the room that was Teddy's destination, instead making him wait outside and asking him questions about how he'd gotten injured. Harry warned them about the fight currently going on and informed them that they'd have more wounded arriving soon, and they accepted his "I have a Ferrari" excuse for how he'd gotten Teddy away so quickly. Then they left him alone, sitting in the smaller waiting room and watching the nearly silent television, which was broadcasting live the battle raging in their streets.

"It seems that Dr Doom is waiting for the latest member of the Avengers, the Black Hood, to make an appearance," the anchor informed them, and Harry grimaced at the completely stupid name, "It is unclear what he wants with New York's newest and most reclusive hero, but what seems to be apparent is that until the Black Hood shows up, Doom is unlikely to back down."

Harry frowned deeply; he wasn't an Avenger. He wasn't _going_ to be an Avenger. For some reason, all the crazies wanted him to be what he wasn't – a hero, a saviour, an _Avenger_; someone worth defeating.

This was the first time in many years that he was considering rising to the challenge.

"But I don't want to be like my own dumbass godfather and just leave you here so I can get my revenge," he murmured, and pulled out his phone to dial a familiar number.

"Potts here," his friend answered, sounding agitated.

"Pep, I need you. Teddy got hurt and I have to help your guys. I'm at the Bellevue Hospital."

"I'll be right there," she said, not even waiting for further explanation, and the dial tone sounded.

Harry sat fidgeting, staring at the escalating fight on the screen. Thor was living up to his legend – lightning was pouring from his hammer like water, destroying Doom's minion bots almost on contact. The Hulk was equally destructive, smashing the things to pieces while Tony, in his armour, was getting rid of anything he missed. Clint was hanging back, situated on a sideways car, mostly aiming for the larger robots with explosive arrows while Natasha took out the smaller bots without breaking a sweat. Steve, meanwhile, was taking on Doom himself – Harry silently rooted his friend on, hoping that every time he clocked the villain in the face with his shield that it removed a tooth or three. He sat there, silently, until Pepper arrived.

"Is Teddy okay?" she said as soon as she spotted him, heels clicking as she marched over.

"I don't know; they haven't told me yet. But I-" his eyes flickered to the screen and he leaned forwards to whisper, "He wants _me_, Pepper, and I don't want anyone else to die because I didn't turn up and he got pissed enough to start tearing apart the city."

Pepper nodded slowly, eying the screen herself, before turning back to him, "And you want me to look after Teddy?"

"I just don't want him waking up alone," he told her.

"Don't take too long, then," she said to him, and Harry thanked her.

"You're listed as his next of kin after me, here in New York. I hope your excuse-making skills are up to par; no normal dad up and leaves when their kid is gravely injured."

"I'm Tony's PA," she assured him, "I have the best excuse-making skills this side of the Atlantic."

* * *

Steve had been knocked to the ground. His shield had taken most of the impact, but it hadn't been able to stop his feet from losing their grip in the face of a particularly powerful blast of energy.

Before he had time to wrench himself upright, though, a flash of black and pale moved past him, impacting Doom in the chest and sending him sprawling.

"You alright, Captain?" the blur asked once it had coalesced into a person. Steve found that he was surprisingly unsurprised to see Harry backing towards him, his hood conspicuous in its absence, indicating that he was probably wearing a mask. Iron Man extricated himself from the building he'd been flung into by an explosion with a grunt and flew over to them as Doom stood up.

"Death," the man in the suit said amicably, "Good to see you again."

Harry snorted; "I hate you."

"So, your name is Death?" Doom asked, upright once more, "How quaint."

"I could say something about your name too, but I'll try not to," Harry said once he'd come to stand next to Steve, "What do you want from me?"

Doom smirked; Steve wondered how he managed through all the metal.

"You are a sorcerer, are you not?" he asked, and Harry scoffed.

"Wizard, actually."

"There's a difference?" Tony muttered, and Steve shushed him.

"The very definition of a sorcerer is one who has no need for wands or foci," Doom informed Harry, who shook his head.

"Practise, mate. I spent seven years using a wand until I realised how much more convenient life was without one. I was born with most of my magic already realised, unlike you."

Doom looked a strange combination of perplexed and insulted by this before he snarled; "Then I have no use for you; I only deal with the very best minds, not weak fools. Perish!"

He sent a bolt of light at Harry, who deftly dodged to the side; "Being a wizard doesn't make me weak _or_ stupid, Doom. You're going to have to do better than a severing curse to off me."

Doom hissed something in Hungarian, to which Harry replied in Russian, making Natasha twitch, and they began exchanging bolts of coloured light, occasionally throwing a blast of ice or fire seemingly to spice things up a bit.

What was happening in front of the Avengers could only be called a duel; both men were violently throwing spells at each other, snarling and snapping insults and threats all the while. News helicopters, becoming bolder on seeing Doom so distracted, had taken to flying lower than was probably legal in order to try and get the best shots of the two combatants, and all Steve could do was watch. Tony occasionally sent a repulsor blast into the fray when Harry looked like he was losing ground, and even Clint shot a couple of arrows at Doom, but short of flinging his shield at them, there wasn't much that Steve could do to help his friend.

At some point, Harry managed to completely gain the upper hand; he had Doom backing up and, eventually, stumbling backwards in an attempt to move away faster.

Harry sent out a particularly violent blast of energy, blindingly white, and Doom fell back with a pained cry.

Harry dashed forward, pulling a rather cruel looking knife from nothing as he went, then stepped on the other man's throat and _leaned_.

"You should never be allowed to hurt anyone again," he murmured calmly, before his expression turned murderous; "Perish," he snarled, sending Doom's words back at him, and raised the knife to stab it into Doom's face.

"HARRY, _DON'T_!" Steve yelled, jumping forward to grab his friend's hands.

Harry shot him a look, and his irises literally flickered with fire - some sort of glamour on his eyes, Steve thought; "You call yourselves Avengers, don't you? What's the point if no one is avenged? How many people died today because this monster wanted a new nemesis?"

"We don't kill, Harry; that's not how we work."

"Because- you are... _weak_..." Doom wheezed through his blocked airways, and Harry applied more pressure without breaking eye contact with Steve.

"When I finally caught the man who had nearly destroyed my world I killed him; it had to be done, Steve. Some people are irredeemable. I'm pretty sure that Doom is one of them!"

"There'd be something of a political shitstorm if you killed him, Death," Iron Man butt in, sauntering over with the rest of the team in tow, "He's kind of the king of Latveria."

"... You're fucking kidding me."

"No, sadly. Sorry."

"I can't kill him because of _politics_?"

"Yup."

"It is a policy that I fail to understand also, Friend Harry," Thor informed him with sympathy, wresting the knife from his grip, "On Asgard when a man or woman is deemed irredeemable they are put to death."

Clint looked somewhat put out; "So your brother is _redeemable_?"

Thor ignored him.

"Weaklings," Doom announced, and Harry pulled his foot back to kick him in the throat, making him choke.

"Okay, so, my son is in the hospital with serious head wounds, Pepper is looking after him, and I'm supposed to let this fucker just run off to his embassy and bugger off home?"

The Avengers shared uneasy looks, though Iron Man was noticeably still; "Apparently," Natasha replied for them, looking rather unhappy about it herself.

Harry's eyes flicked to the knife in Thor's hands and he sighed.

"Just... Don't come see me for a couple of days, okay. This is possibly the worst let down in a long history of SHIELD-related let downs, and I need to look after kiddo."

"_Wait_, wait, wait, wait," Tony interrupted before he could apparate away, his face plate flipping up as he stepped forward; "How the hell do you know Pepper?"

Harry shrugged. "Why don't you ask her next time you see her?"

"I'm asking you."

"Don't worry, Tony; I've known her for years and neither of us have ever been prone to fits of uncontrollable lust, so there's no need to be jealous."

"I'm not jealous."

"Sure thing, mate," Harry said, turning on his heel and disappearing with a near-silent "pop!".

"All of you are _weak_!" Doom told them as he struggled to sit up.

Steve hit him in the face with his shield, knocking him out; "Just _shut up_."

* * *

Political shitstorm be damned; the _media_ storm that occurred in the wake of his "big reveal" was _insane_.

Reporters all over the place were going nuts with speculation; a young man in a mask steps in and defeats a known villain with only minimal input from earth's mightiest heroes, who were standing right behind him the entire time. Some stations insisted that he was The Black Hood minus the hood, while other bemoaned the sharply increasing number of mutants and freaks inhabiting their world, not particularly caring about who he was.

Several of the bigger names in news, however, had started calling him "Death", after a _source_ told them that that was his alias. It was possibly even worse than "The Black Hood", because a couple had even started tacking "The Master of" onto the beginning. The Master of Death was something that only wizards knew existed, and only a select number of them could say that they knew who that was. He was glad that he hadn't been there to witness Hermione's face when she'd seen the first report.

Then there were the people who were calling for his incarceration; Harry had, after all, tried to kill Doom, and the other heroes tended to avoid killing humans (squid-people and gross-looking aliens, apparently, did not garner their sympathy). Of course no one had actually been close enough to hear that he had been threatening the villain, but a man raising a knife over another man's skull is somewhat self-explanatory.

"I sent an anonymous email to all the major news stations," Tony informed him via text after he'd asked Steve to try and find out who the _source_ was so he could have a _chat_ with him, "You are officially Death, The Master of, according to news agencies worldwide."

Harry had sent him a simple, "I hate you," in reply, and shut the phone. Tony was obviously still upset about not knowing about his friendship with his girlfriend, Teddy still hadn't woken, and Pepper had long since left – presumably to try and calm Tony down. Now it was Harry, his son and the quiet of the ward at night.

* * *

"Dad?" came the weak call from the bed, and Harry's head shot up from where he'd been resting; it had been three days since Teddy's injuries were inflicted, and he had been sleeping at his bedside the entire time, despite his friends' insistences that he get some fresh air or _food_.

"Hey kiddo," he breathed, relief rushing over him like a waterfall, "You had me really worried - and the doctors were near hysterical."

Teddy's eyes moved slowly about the room, taking time to focus on each place he looked before turning back to Harry, "This isn't Herberstein's is it?" he asked, referring to the magical hospital that serviced half of Manhattan.

"Nah. If I'd taken you there, they would have laughed you right out of the room. Your injuries were caused by a muggle, after all."

"Didn't look like a muggle," Teddy muttered grumpily.

Harry smiled gently at his son; "The Wizarding World doesn't count sorcerers as wizards, you know that."

"Dumb," he mumbled, before falling asleep.

"Yeah, pretty stupid," he replied to the sleeping boy, touching his hair lightly before leaning back into his chair to wait out the rest of the night in a silent vigil.

* * *

"I spent too much time in a hospital this week," Harry informed Tony as he sat at the older man's bar, feeling somewhat tipsy, "I feel like this is some sort of prelude for when my friends start getting older; they're all going to get old, you know? Everyone is going to get old. _Everyone_."

"Yes they are, Harry," Tony told him, topping up the wizard's whiskey, "That's what happens to most humans. Me? I plan to live forever, so no worries about that."

"_Everyone_," he insisted, "You, Steve, Pepper – hey Thor!" he suddenly yelled turning to face the god, who was reclining on one of the couches, "Is your dad old?"

"Of course," Thor replied, glancing over at them, "My father has been alive for longer than your planet has existed; even we are not completely immortal. Eventually Ragnarök will take us and we will be reborn and only father will have memories of our previous time, as has happened before."

"See! Even gods get old!"

"You obviously missed the bit where they get reincarnated exactly the same as they were before," Tony pointed out dryly.

"That's beside the point. They don't live forever."

"Where are you getting with this, Harry?" Tony asked, humour completely absent from his face, "I dragged you up here to stop you from moping around Teddy's bedside; I didn't expect you to have an existential crisis when you got here."

"I am the _Master of Death_," Harry informed him grimly, frowning, "You're the genius; you figure it out."

Tony stared at him for a moment, eyes devoid of anything but puzzling, until they widened with realisation.

"You can't die."

"Did we not already know this?" asked Thor from the couch, evidently confused.

"No, like, _ever_," Tony said, leaning against the bar behind him, "You can never ever die? _Seriously_? If I were you I'd be throwing a party or something!"

"Never mind, then," Harry sighed, putting his tumbler down, "I forgot that when it comes to being a normal human you're an idiot."

He stood up, somewhat wobbly about the knees – he'd have to take a sobering draught – and smiled at Tony, "I'm going home, since I doubt you'll let me near Teddy until tomorrow for fear of me smothering him or something. If Steve comes back and asks, tell him that's where I am."

"We are so not done with this," Tony informed him, "Next time you come here I am putting you in the lab and Bruce and I are running every test under the sun."

"Uh huh, sure," he said noncommittally, turning on his heel and disappearing.

* * *

Steve wondered at the fact that Harry had apparently opened the bar while he was in such a right state. It was probably to take his mind off of things, more of a coping mechanism than any real need to work. Teddy was fine, of course, but Steve was well aware of Harry's tendency to make a small thing into a ridiculously huge thing, so he had to make sure that the green-eyed man was really okay.

He pushed open the door, long after all the other customers had left, and smiled at the messiness that signalled a night full of drinkers and happiness in the bar – hopefully Harry was feeling better now.

"No."

Steve blinked and shut his mouth.

He hadn't even said anything – and he'd only just walked in! How had Harry known-

"It's written all over your face, Steve. You saw how I reacted when Teddy got hurt and now you're dreaming up some sort of strange scenario where I become an Avenger after a long chat and a glass of whatever liquor I try to ply you with," Harry informed him, shaking his head, "The answer is no. It will remain no until Teddy is graduated from college and capable of fighting his own battles, and will probably stay that way even after that. Being able to change his appearance can only help him so far, and I won't risk his life again for all the fame and glory in the world."

Steve couldn't help the sigh that escaped him, "I admit, I was going to ask you about it again," he said quietly, coming to stand at the bar, "I know you've been there, done that, it's just... Couldn't you retire from heroism when you're old? When you actually can't handle it anymore?"

"You don't understand, Steve, I'm never going to _be_ old," Harry said despairingly, "Being Master of Death is not just a get out of Hel free card; I will _never_ age, I will _never_ die. I am going to be puttering around this planet – this _universe_ – long, _long_, after the last human being has died off or moved on. I will exist until the universe itself ceases to be."

Steve really didn't know what to say to that; the agony in his friend's eyes didn't exactly lend words to him, and platitudes or condolences were not going to help either of them. Steve thought he knew what it was like, to outlive everyone you loved, but Harry was going to be there _when_ they died. Harry was going to be there when their _children_ died. He was going to be there when their entire _race_ died. Steve had no words to comfort that kind of hurt.

"So join us later," he said instead of voicing his rapidly downward-spiralling thoughts, "after Teddy learns how to fight for himself. You can't hide in your bar for the rest of your life, Harry; you know that."

Harry smiled tightly, before he snorted and began to laugh. He descended into something that could only be called hysteria, and by the time he was finished and gasping for breath there were tears in his eyes.

"By Merlin, Steve, I love you!" he cried, leaning across the bar and wrapping his arms around the blonde.

Steve closed his eyes and rubbed his friend's back, pretending not to notice the dampness on his shoulder or the shuddering beneath his hand.

"You too, Harry. Is that a yes?" he replied cheekily after a minute or so, when the bar digging into his hip had started to be painful.

Harry pulled back and wiped at his eyes with the palm of his hand, a smile splitting his face nearly in half.

"It's a "maybe later", you cocky bastard."

"Stubborn kid."

"You may have been born before me, but I've lived longer."

"And you probably will live longer than me, too," Steve told him, "But you have to _live_."

Harry blinked rapidly and fished his keys out of his pocket.

"Come on, let's go to Central Park or something," he said, coming around the bar and dragging Steve along with him by the elbow to the door.

"You're just going to leave place looking like this?" Steve asked, looking back at the bar which was cluttered with the empty glasses and bottles that Harry had been cleaning.

"I'm living; the dishes can wait."

Steve smiled. They left, and the door shut softly behind them.

* * *

_"Drinking is a way of ending the day."_

**~ Ernest Hemingway**

* * *

**AN:** Well this was abrupt (and terrible, and choppy, and it made no sense, and oh my gods I am so sorry for this train wreck of a chapter).

I realised, after my week of single-story writer's block that deviating from my original story plan was what had made this entire thing stop working for me; I should have stuck to what I was doing and let your imaginations do the work for you!

So yeah, one somewhat-epilogue to go and this thing is finito.

... I love you all, please don't kill me?

* * *

**To Meh4:** EWE means "Epilogue? What Epilogue?" and is basically a big "fuck you!" to JK Rowling's epilogue. This story actually is mostly sticking to that, except for Harry and Ginny's relationship because Ginny/Harry is a pairing that I have despised since long before the fifth book came out. I hated it before it was even canon! XD


	12. Loki And The Cycle Starts Again

_"Life inside a bottle all alone,  
All alone,  
The bottles gone._

_What's life inside a bottle if it's gone?"_

**~ _Pour Me_, Hollywood Undead**

* * *

**Loki and the Cycle Starts Again**

Loki was abysmally disappointed with the human race. Less than two thousand years since his people's last great jaunt on the planet and they had already forgotten the power of their gods.

The power of _any_ gods, it seemed. Oh, he had seen references to Olympus on their image-capturing devices and every man and their dog had heard of Anubis, but the gods that had saved them from certain annihilation were forgotten almost entirely.

But for _him_.

He hastily shook away the thoughts of his brother. They would only anger him, he knew, and Heimdall was watching; it would not do to start breaking things in the middle of a city he had already partially broken before, glamour or no.

He wondered what Odin would do if he were to skip out on the human-interaction portion of his punishment and take a vacation on an island, far from everyone. The old man seemed to be of the opinion that sending him to this purgatory, full of humans to interact with, would do him the same good that it had done his _brother_. He was of the opinion that the All-Father was going senile.

Loki wandered aimlessly, unrecognisable to the masses, through New York. He was bored almost into insensitivity – did humans do _nothing_ fun _at all_? He had half a mind to turn someone into a rainbow penguin or something, just to spice things up a bit.

His still-green eyes flickered about, reading all manner of signs and flyers as he walked. _No Parking_ read one, another said _No Standing_. Hm, humans were stranger than he had thought; how did they expect people to get past that stretch of path then, crawl? He defiantly walked through the area that the sign presided over – no human could tell _him_ what to do.

Another sign caught his attention, this one advertising a mead hall. "The Dragon's Tongue", it was called. Loki chuckled darkly; he doubted the owner of the establishment would have named it such a thing had he ever met a dragon face to face.

His curiosity, however, was aroused, and Loki was never one to ignore the prospect of knowledge, however trivial, and so he entered with the intention of finding out the story behind the name.

On walking inside, the first thing that he saw was a dimly lit entrance hall that contained a staircase going down, one going up, and not much else. To his immediate left was a door to a brightly lit room, filled with patrons milling around the bar and the singular barkeep.

Loki found himself suddenly thankful for his glamour; so many people altogether were not deadly, but mobs had a bad habit of starting riots. He knew from experience that being set on fire by an angry mob _hurt_, and he was in no hurry to do it again.

He stood for a moment, silently conjuring a wallet full of the strange paper money these people used, and approached the bar.

On the counter, once he'd managed to squeeze through the crowd, was a drinks menu, which he opened. The barkeep smiled at him and probably would have said something, but was distracted by another group of people ordering.

"I'll have a Frigga's Prophecy," one woman said, and Loki started at the sound of his mother's name, "and my friend will have... Yeah, she'll have a Hathor's Kiss."

"Coming right up," said the barkeep, pulling out a variety of different bottles from different shelves. What they ended up with was one golden cocktail and a layered baby pink and pastel yellow one. The latter turned out to be the one named for Loki's mother, and he smiled ever-so-slightly as he agreed with its creator's assessment of his mother's colours.

A tiny glass of green liquid was placed before him, and he looked up in surprise.

"On the house, since this is your first time here," he was informed, the statement accompanied by a large smile.

"What is it?" Loki asked, pulling the glass towards him and taking a sniff; it smelled like a strange mixture of peppermint and smoke.

"Down it in one and I'll tell you," barkeep said with a grin. Loki smirked back. Alcohol on Asgard was much stronger than human fare; if the barkeep was trying to make him splutter, he had another thing coming.

"To the All-Father," he intoned – because he was a respectful man that way – and knocked back the shot.

He blinked at the fiery feeling that invaded his mouth, and opened his mouth to comment. A surprised look adorned face instead, when it felt as if he had tried to drink of the water from Jötunheimr.

"What is this?" he asked, examining the few drops left in the glass.

"It's called "Loki's Breath"," barkeep informed him, and Loki's eyes turned up to meet his.

"Interesting choice."

"I thought you'd appreciate the irony."

Loki did _not_ gape at the barkeep's back as he returned an elegant green and gold bottle to the shelf, because princes of Asgard (or Jötunheimr) do not gape or give away weakness so plainly.

When next the barkeep came towards him, Loki said, "I'll have an Avenger, please."

Barkeep smiled knowingly, "You want a lighter with that?" he asked quietly, making sure no one else heard.

Loki scoffed; "No, thank you. If I wanted to light it on fire I'd do it myself."

"Which translates to "I won't"," he said, as if he knew Loki's thoughts. He would have said something snarky in return, but he knew that it would be pointless; he wasn't going to set the drink alight.

Said drink, shimmering silver-white, was placed before him a moment later.

His night continued thusly; every time the barkeep came around he would stop and chat with Loki as he prepared his next drink, and then he would be dragged away by other patrons looking to try one of his insane concoctions.

Now _here_ was a mortal that Loki could appreciate, mostly because the man appreciated his people. Almost every prominent name in Asgard was represented on this menu, though Odin's was in a somewhat round-about fashion, and even Hel and Jötunheimr got a mention.

Certainly the other Pantheons that humans had invented were mentioned, but the Celtic and Norse gods were the most rounded-out. Loki couldn't figure out whether it was because the barkeep had started with them first or because he liked them more. The latter was more gratifying, really.

And then, eventually, the other customers began to trickle out. Eventually it was just the barkeep and Loki, and he took advantage of this to ask, "And how is it that you know my name, human?"

The barkeep smiled, "Your eyes. They have that certain glow to them that no human could ever hope to imitate."

Loki preened slightly, and the barkeep chuckled. Loki let a tiny smile part his lips before it disappeared and he stood to leave.

"It was a pleasure to meet you, Loki Whoeversson," he said flatly, and Loki laughed.

"Odinsson will do. And you, mister..?"

"Harry Potter," Harry said with a very over-done bow.

The smirk that split Loki's face was positively devilish; "The name whispered all across Hel."

"I'm sure Hela has told you all about me."

"Indeed. Goodnight, Master of Death."

"Goodnight, Doer of Good and Doer of Evil."

Loki disappeared with a grin and a swirl of magic.

Teddy stuck his head around the doorway; "Did you seriously just exchange banter with Public Enemy Number One?" he asked incredulously.

"He got through the wards, didn't he?" Harry asked calmly, starting to clear up the tables and chairs. Teddy grabbed a cloth from behind the bar to help out.

"Yeah, but he's a _god_. Do the wards affect gods?"

"Have a little faith, Teddy," Harry told him, "Sometimes people just need to be seen for who they really are."

"A psychopathic megalomaniac with daddy issues?"

"Teddy," he scolded gently.

His son, ever the mature one, sighed, "What are you going to tell Steve?"

Harry shrugged, smiling, "Thor asked me not to tell anyone."

"You _planned_ that?" Teddy asked incredulously, "_Thor_ planned that? Is the world ending? Should I tell my friends that Ragnarök is coming?"

Harry laughed; "I don't scheme and tell, kiddo. Rest assured though, that if Ragnarök was coming, I would tell you."

"I just- you- ugh!" he choked, turning and stomping up the stairs.

"Clean your room!" Harry called after him, receiving an innarticulate scream in return.

"Teenage angst, huh?" Steve asked from the door as he made his way inside.

"Yup," Harry shrugged, "I'll grow out of it eventually."

Steve snorted, "So, what are you making me drink today?"

"Tonight, you are having a Quetzalcoatl," Harry informed him grandly, bowing before he poured a large glass of green and amber liquid, the two colours swirling lazily around each other inside.

"Which is?" he asked as he slid onto a stool.

"Wind and learning. Oh, and dawn."

Steve shot him a look; "I get the feeling that this is significant somehow."

"You have _no_ idea, mate," Harry smirked, raising his own glass of the same liquor, "Drink up."

* * *

**Author's Note:**

This was actually the second chapter that I wrote; I suppose that tells you all you need to know about how short this story was supposed to be!

Thank you all for your support (and I suppose thank you to the nasties that made me stiffen up my spine a bit). I wrote this story for you guys, so even if it didn't go the way you were hoping I sincerely hope you enjoyed the ride.

Special thanks to _Phantom Feline_ for being a good little stalker, and to Johnny Napalm for giving me the warm fuzzies no matter where I decided to go with this!

And to every one of you; all of my considerable love,

**~ Runaway**


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